WSA,
The technical issue is that fluorescent lights do not have a continous spectrum, although they appear white to our eyes, but they emit only certain wavelengths.As a rough statement, chlorophyll absorbs blue and red light, so the illuminating light must have a decent output of blue and red portion of the spectrum. What type of plants you have?
This table might be helpful "Luminous efficiency of various light sources".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grow_light