I had this dumb lighting idea earlier:

A 9w LED that's a 100w replacement. It's a frosted filament LED at 2700k with a CRI of ~99, just like an incandescent lamp. And for those who like/need the heat in it's application, a 91w heater is built in! 

Imagine how little it would last-

You are not too far off from led traffic signals. In snowy regions, LED retrofits for incandescents had heater coils to melt snow.


Also, the "heater led" should be 3-way. Imagine setting it to heater only, and grabbing it thinking it's off   !

Those heaters in traffic signals seem quite smart, this led retrofit however, not so much.

 When LED warning lighting became popular on emergency vehicles the originals were plagued with becoming obscured by snow and ice while driving .

A LED bulb with a built in heater might work well for a lava lamp, especially if you can change colour temperature. Now a incandescent is probably more practical. 

I've heard about the LED traffic signal modules with heaters, in my area they sometimes add a clear plastic baffle over the LED instead. 

The biggest problem I've seen with the LED signals is dirt accumulation on the top half of the module blocking almost all light from the upper half .

No issues with LED traffic lights here, except after 10 years in service a couple chips may go black which is acceptable considering the number of hours they rack up. No snow but plenty of dirt and rain.

I am unaware of any heating systems being built into the traffic lights. But i've never seen snow accumulating on them.

There were several different implementations of the heaters, one was to integrate the heaters into the LED signal modules, like what GE did with their GT-X Heated shell lineup (discontinued?) and another was to fit them into the visors.

I think in my area LED traffic signal modules are generally group replaced every 10 years or so. The first and second generation LED signal modules were changed out around around 6-8 years ago, replacing the original ones installed in the early 2000s, which themselves replaced incandescent signals.

I don't see too many issues with dirt accumulation here, even with the LEDs. I suppose back in the incandescent days, they were relamped annually so they were probably cleaned then too, not sure about them now though.

Those 115s in the link you provided @wide-lite 1000 sure are on large poles lighting a large area!

 90% of them have been replaced already due to failures .

Townships around here still use incandescent lamps for their traffic signals, funnily enough. Especially with older signals, it's common to see standard incandescents or those abominable, flickery Leotek LED installs of the very early 2000s, especially for the green signal.

LEDs are (obviously) used in new signal installs, though it seems to be the case that incandescents are still used for the yellow light.

Down here we don't have enough snow to need any of that stuff. Interestingly I haven't seen a single incandescent signal yet in North Carolina!

Fully incandescent signals here have pretty much been gone for around a decade here. There's still some incandescent amber sections and beacons left, but that's about it. Even the older all metal signals are becoming rare to see now. I think only smaller towns still have incandescent signals left.

You'll still see some incandescent signals in places like parking garages, car washes, and loading docks, although those have increasingly been relamped with LED as the incandescents fail. 

 There's still a handful of full incandescent signals around Columbus .

 Anyone know what these nightmares are ?  https://maps.app.goo.gl/n8utS75AA1ZLgH6Q9  There's a bunch of them in Connecticut near my friend's house . Most have several diodes out .