https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4626/text/ih

This act would require stricter oversight on the DOE before they impose new efficiency rules on home appliances - for example, light bulbs.

It would also allow them to repeal old standards, like the rule that banned incans.

It has made it past committee, and is awaiting a vote in the House. Might be worth keeping an eye on.

Very interesting, I really would never expect this. Hope it goes through

That does look promising. Really hope it goes through and incandescent and triphosphor F40T12 fluorescent bulbs end up becoming unbanned.

What do you mean? Triphosphor tubes are the only kind you can buy right now.

@Lcubed3
Yes, triphosphor is basically all that is made now. But not T12s, their manufacture has been banned in the US since 2012 if I remember correctly. Old T12 stock remains of course, but no more manufacturing them. Unfortunately in some states you can't even buy the remaining stock because they banned selling T12s too.

@Lcubed3 and @Multisubject - I am referring to the 700 and 800 series lamps that were banned in 2012 for being “too inefficient.” F40T12s are still under manufacture, but the only ones available now are high-CRI ones (either halophosphate deluxe colors or another weird type that I think might be a form of multiphosphor) that are super dim. But that’s what the ban exempted, instead of the nice bright triphosphor 700 and 800 series lamps, we were left with the least efficient, dimmest lamps.

Triphosphor is not the only type of lamp that you can buy today, not by a long shot. In fact, most “old school” lamp sizes (excluding F40T12 and F96T12 of course) are still regular halophosphate to this day, particularly cool white and daylight versions. Warm white versions became triphosphor a few decades ago to achieve better color rendering, but you can still find halophosphate versions from smaller brands.

Something I noticed was interesting is that in the past 2-3 years it seems like some lamp manufacturers secretly updated some of the older lamps to be triphosphor instead of halophosphate. For example it seems like the later GE F4T5/WW and F4T5/CW lamps are actually /830 and /841 lamps. The ordering code was never updated, but the specs were changed to reflect the higher CRI and lumen output. It's possible some of the other lamp types were secretly updated as well.

@joseph_125 - I have noticed that as well. It is definitely a curious situation. Triphosphor miniature T5 lamps have been extremely rare throughout the entire course of those lamps’ existence, with only a handful of models being produced. Why they would start secretly using triphosphors without even making any notice of it is weird to me, especially since I’m not sure it’s universal on all of the GE miniature T5 lamps in production. Perhaps the triphosphors really are getting cheaper than halophosphates. The manufacturers have always been super stingy on specialty and residential-grade lamps, using halophosphates on nearly every lamp they can, and if not halophosphates then 700 series phosphors. I apologize if this is a ridiculous thought, but I wonder if those miniature lamps could have more of a connection to CFL manufacturing. CFLs are triphosphor with practically no exceptions, perhaps if the miniature T5 lamps are being made in the same factories as CFLs, maybe it just made more sense logistically to switch them to triphosphor.

I wonder if reduced production volumes for those lamps starting in the mid-late 2010s meant it was more economical for the lamp manufacturers to standardize on triphosphors which were required for 4ft T12/T8 lamps instead of have a separate batch of halophosphors for the shorter lamps. I noticed for the Philis/Signify lamps that the Soft Whites got replaced by /830 instead, even the F8T5s but I think the cool white lamps shorter than 4ft were still halophosphate.

Not sure about Sylvania as all the hardware stores stopped selling Sylvania 3 years ago.   

@joseph_125 - I believe GE, Sylvania, and Philips all switched their residential warm white lamps to triphosphor by the late 90s or early 2000s. GE had ‘Kitchen & Bath’ (AKA SP30/730, or SPX30/830 for the K&B Ultra version), Philips had ‘Soft White’ (AKA 30U/830), and Sylvania had ‘Designer 3000K’ (AKA 730). I believe they did this for the higher CRI as warm white lamps are typically used in indoor applications where you would want colors to look as natural as possible, and warm white halophosphate lamps are notorious for having an extremely low CRI of 52. They kept the cool white and daylight lamps halophosphate and they are still like that to this day as far as I know.

Ironically, it was the miniature T5 lamps where the warm whites largely stayed halophosphate all that time. I’m pretty sure Philips was the only one to make them triphosphor.