What If there was a company that started manufacturing MV fixtures and ballasts in the USA?
What I think would happen is that the government would try to stop it, but if the news companies and social media hear, then they will report that "The government is stopping American manufacturing!".
And then people would try to stop it, which could mean removing the ban.
Is it possible?

Mercury is not a large volume product anymore, but it have the places where it remains good choice. If not the government bans, there would remain small and steady ongoing demand for Mercury gear and luminaires

that would be bad business sense and it isn't going to happen. MV is an obsolete product by several generations.

Except it could still happen, because American manufacturing is still very real and wanted.

Most peeps would buy a lamp based on what they need (or what was sold to them) and not place of manufacture. But the more we get into this, themore we understand that "basic" stuff (electrics, cables, ...) that are not made in our home countries are simply substandard in quality

That too, and it seems like the "media" will jump on anything, even if it is "obsolete".

It's a dead technology.

Are you sure? Rural Florida wouldn't think that.

Mercury is and will remain a good workhorse. Its not the big cash nowadays but its got its small stable share of application

Such as locations that are hard to get to, or in remote areas.

As already stated, MV is outdated, not as efficient as HPS and MH (yes yes yes I know MV lasts a looooooong time) Regardless of where you live, it's just a matter of time before no one produces those bulbs any longer.  Not even China.  So if you like MV, stock up on the products NOW.  Otherwise, accept the fact that there is not going to be anything you can do about MV and eventually HPS and MH going away in favor of LED and the following advancements.  You don't have to like it, but you do have to accept it.  Mainly because it will be out of your control to do anything about it.  Which sucks big time, I know. 

As already stated, MV is outdated, not as efficient as HPS and MH (yes yes yes I know MV lasts a looooooong time) Regardless of where you live, it's just a matter of time before no one produces those bulbs any longer.  Not even China.  So if you like MV, stock up on the products NOW.  Otherwise, accept the fact that there is not going to be anything you can do about MV and eventually HPS and MH going away in favor of LED and the following advancements.  You don't have to like it, but you do have to accept it.  Mainly because it will be out of your control to do anything about it.  Which sucks big time, I know. 

Consider that Carbon incandescent bulbs are still being made, but they are very obsolete.

I call BS. It is LED marketing, not LED advantages that push it to everywhere instead of just its legit area of application. As long as there is a better lamp than LED for an application, there will be found the users with sense to demand this lamp and therefore manufacturing of the lamp, unless the government intervents to ban it to force the use of another lamp. I am mostly about HPS and CMH here, as they have the upper hand on LED today and are going to have it in the future

Carbon GLS are not made, all the "vintage like" stuff is Tungsten

How exactly?

Efficacy? nope
Color quality? nope
Durability? nope
Dimmability? nope
Instant on output? nope

So, please tell how HPS and MH will keep the upper hand in the future. You may also pass on your insights to Osram, Philips and GE, this may convince them to stop reducing capacity and closing their HID lamp factories, and selling their standard lamp business to the Chinese.

So, you're pretty certain to have customers then. What stops you from starting your own business? to figure it out by yourself? You could get the capital you need from Kickstarter, that would give you a pretty good idea about the general interest for mercury lighting systems...

...Then you find out that a CMH lamp with just 100 lm/w beats a lot of LED bulbs with 90 or fewer of that rating.
...Then you find out that there are lots of low CRI LEDs, some with as low as the high 60's!
...Then you find out that there are lamps with extra supports.
...Then you find out that there are dimmable CMH ballasts.
...Then you find out that LED also doesn't always have instant on output, and the Xenon MH bulbs used in cars have a practically instant output.

Doesn't mean that Chinese lamps are always bad.

Rural Florida is usually powered by FPL, which we all know loves bucket lights, which are (almost) always HID.

I'm asking if LED is really the magic bullet it claims to be.
There's a reason you don't see LED being used as oven lights.
Is LED the final frontier in lighting? What situations can LED not be used for?
And don't forget that there's a 100 CRI MH lamp, and the best LEDs can only go to 98.
You could just make your own dimmable ballast, and another solution is to have 2 CMH lamps in 1 fixture, and then have a higher level of dimming.
Why are HID fixtures, ballasts, connectors, and lamps still made? There's got to be a good reason.
LED does have its purposes.
What is LED not good for?
And what's a burner?

Max, i sure hope you dont call Holophane or Cree stuff junk ? Quite a lot of it have efficacy which is below that of HIDs or Fluorescents from equally reputable, or sometimes the exact same manufacturers



CRI is not the one and only measurement for ligth quality or acceptability. Waving with 90+ CRI LEDs when the intended application is road lighting is just a show off, a parameter which does not matter for the application (within some range, in this case 60 < X < 100) when many others do. One of the others that matter is glare prevention, which is where many of the current LED designs fall short of any acceptable performance

The CDM lamps are good lamp for its application : for lighting roads, not for lighting museum exhibitions. For the museum you might want, for example, to trade lamp life and efficacy for better color quantities, color stability, minimization of UV output, and whatever else... So you'd choose something else there, if you are doing sensible lighting design

That is my point with all lighting technologies : They all have their unbeatable strengths and very apparent deficiencies. LEDs are not any different. In our world we have many applications that absolutely need one or two of a speciic lamp's properties, while dont care at all about another three or four of them



Speaking of the garbage container. I come from IT sphere, where there is one "interesting" phenomena :

You give somebody a project to do. Something that you will integrate into something else in the future. Sometimes the size of thing one person can make from start to end, sometimes bigger stuff that needs team work. Yo dont really care what development environment he uses so give him the freedom to choose, as long as the final thing can be integrated in

Some programmers will inquire about what is needed and then lazily build something very basic and dumb that just does what was expected, and their solution will usually work fine for long time, sometimes many years. Even if they build it with quite obsolete technology

Some programmers think that the project is a quest to show off their programming skillz, so they will build something that can be described best as a summary of EVERYTHING they can do with their preferred development environment, and sorta does what was required. But is just a nuisance every time you have to touch it (the users dont complain if the thing have UI, cause that is often the shiniest part of all, its you the sysadmin that have to deal with the trash at the backend). So all the shiny thing have to be thrown out to the garbage of IT, sometimes in spite of the supposedly better features.....

Thanks but no thanks, and now i have to calm down all the users that dont understand why it is all broken again when it allready "worked" fine for a while

Dimmed incandescents are good for low UV.