Rerouting sunlight?

Hi all,

I have a potentially odd question that I didn't see addressed in any of my searches.

As we all know, we're attempting to do what mother nature does best: give our plants lots of light to use for photosynthesis. Sunlight does it better, of course, but we get to control all the details. I'm wondering if it's possible to still take advantage of that wonderful sun, though.

Let's say I have a grow cabinet in my basement and I'm using multiple cfls. I'm already at a disadvantage, I know, but money and power use are serious issues to me. Anyway, in my basement is a window that gets nice direct sunlight almost all day. Would it be possible for me to "reroute" the sunlight from the window into my growbox? I figure I can do this with reflective surfaces (though not mirrors, of course) lining some type of corridor down which I'll conduct the sunlight (should be about 8 feet total with one small bend) I will, of course, avoid any hotspots and the like.

I guess some corollary questions one could ask here are: would doing this fuck anything up? Is indirect sunlight better than what I could obtain with a pretty good cfl setup alone?

Thanks in advance.

Are you thinking something like this...
http://www.solatube.com/residential/res_education.php

I have 2 20" Solar tubes (different brand- but same concept) in one 10' x 10' room in my house in the Southwest where it's always sunny. They brighten up the room pretty nicely, in fact, I don't have any lights in the room at all.

The solar tubes keep a couple fig trees and many houseplants thriving through out the year but the peak of intensity isn't all that great, and it doesn't last that long. I have not tried to grow anything else in that room. Seems like it would be great supplemental lighting.

Hope it helps.

even if you could get any reasonable amount of lumens to where you need them, how do you control the photoperiod? motorized shades on a timer? not to mention then people can see into your grow from outside.

novel idea though, props for that.