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.