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.

 They can "unban" whatever they like , doesn't mean manufacturers are gonna restart production . Most of the equipment for making that stuff has been long ago scrapped .  I like my old , non computerised cars without all of the "technology gadgets" . I'll pretty much guarantee non will ever be built again in mass quantities .

Correct, the machinery, tooling, and even the documentation and institutional knowledge associated with making this stuff probably all got tossed, scrapped, when the plants were closed and the employees left/retired. At best the equipment and tooling might have gotten transferred to other plants in the world that still make this stuff. I think Signify might have done that when they transferred fluorescent production to India. You might be able to restart simpler lamps such as incandescent, fluorescent but even then initial quality would suffer...think about how modern Polaroid film compares in quality compared to vintage Polaroid film, or even Fuji Instax for that matter.

More complicated lamps such as HID, especially ones with a PCA arctube and SOX would probably be too hard to restart production...worst case you might have to redo the decades of work done to optimize the process.

The same applies for the luminaires as well, the tooling for making housings, reflectors and especially the refractors is probably long gone as well. The manufacture of the refractors was complicated enough that most manufacturers contracted it out to companies specialized in glassware such as Holophane, Corning, and Kopp Glass. Fluorescent luminaires are a bit easier to restart production, you can make simple fixtures from a sheet metal cutting laser and a bending brake...even fixtures like louvers. 

That is true, and I’m really hoping that that doesn’t end up being a roadblock in production restarting. There are other countries that do not have lighting bans and still have traditional lamps for sale, at least some machinery must still exist somewhere. As much as I would love to see a return of US-made lamps similar to what GE, Sylvania, and Philips used to make, I wouldn’t be opposed to imported lamps as long as the quality is decent, which if they’re anything like the imported lamps of decades ago, it probably would be.

I don’t think luminaries suffer from the same issues as lamps. The reason I say this is because there are LED fixtures now that use the exact same housings as the old traditional fixtures. It’s just integrated LED instead of fluorescent or whatever. I know this is at least true for fluorescent, not sure about HID but I’d imagine there’s probably some. Incandescent is kind of immune to this issue, because there are still plenty of incandescent fixtures available that are just used with screw-based LED lamps.