by Brianna Crandall — May 13, 2015—The seventh annual Next Generation Luminaires (NGL) Solid-State Lighting Design Competition has recognized 28 commercial light-emitting diode (LED) indoor and outdoor lighting products for excellence. The winners were announced last week at the LIGHTFAIR International annual architectural and commercial lighting trade show and conference in New York.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), and the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD), NGL was launched in 2008 to encourage technical innovation and promote excellence in the design of energy-efficient LED luminaires for commercial, industrial, and institutional applications.
Reflecting the continuing development of LED lighting technology, there were marked improvements on multiple fronts in the 2015 NGL competition, according to the organizers. For example, winning products beat NGL’s threshold efficacy by 10%-40% — reportedly all the more impressive because those threshold levels are raised each year.
In addition, lumen maintenance scores — supported by LM80and TM-21 data — indicate that most of the recognized luminaires have moved well beyond the nominal claims of L70 (70% of initial light output) at 50,000 hours — with more than 80% of the indoor winners showing lumen maintenance above L80 at 50,000 hours, and more than half of all outdoor entries showing L95 at 50,000 hours.
On the down side, glare remains the lagging quality among LED luminaires in virtually all categories, although NGL-recognized products clearly outperformed unrecognized ones in this regard.
The idea behind NGL is to make it easier for lighting designers, facilities managers and other specifiers to find LED lighting products that are worthy of specification. This means recognized products have to measure up on many fronts, say the organizers, with market-ready samples and complete documentation required to verify actual performance.
The 2015 NGL entries were evaluated by a panel of 18 judges drawn from the architectural lighting community and were scored on color, illuminance, glare control, light distribution, serviceability, value, dimming control, and appearance — with lumen maintenance and luminous efficacy ratings based on LM79, LM80, and TM21 data submitted to DOE’s LED Lighting Facts program by the manufacturers.
The 2015 Indoor NGL focused on controllability and serviceability, and the 2015 Outdoor NGL focused on serviceability and pedestrian scale, with submissions limited toselected product types to permit focus on those attributes. The 2015 Indoor and Outdoor competitions recognized a total of 28 luminaires, highlighting 12 as Outstanding.
Indoor – Outstanding (with categories):
User Interface
- Finelite Inc. for FineTune System
Dimming
- Selux Corporation for Kju
- Juno Lighting Group for Indy L-Series LED Cylinder
- USAI Lighting for Max Output Warm Glow Dimming
Serviceability
- Louis Poulsen for LP Circle Pendant
- Selux Corporation for M36 LED My White
- Finelite Inc. for HPR-LED 2×2
Efficacy
- Intense Lighting for Gravity Cylinder
- amerlux for MURRO LED WALL WASH
Outdoor – Outstanding:
Innovation
- Cree for IG Series
Form Factor
- Landscape Forms Inc. for MultipliCITY LED
Versatility
- Selux Corporation for Olivio Sistema 2 LED
For more information and photos of this year’s NGL indoor and outdoor winners, including the full list of Recognized products, visit the Next Generation Luminaires Web site.
