The US Department of Energy (DOE), the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD), and the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) have opened the 2013 Next Generation Luminaires (NGL) competition for indoor solid- state lighting (SSL) products. Companies that wish to enter LED-based products must provide a Written Intent to Submit by January 18, 2013 and must then supply products for testing and judging by February 8, 2013.

Complete rules for the competition are available on the NGL website. The judging process includes evaluation of entered products installed in a typical application scenario. Moreover, the judges also consider documentation including photometric files and product collateral developed by the manufacturer.

NGL has been and still is a competition for market-ready products. For 2013 however, the NGL organizers have also added categories for emerging products and technologies. Specifically the organizers will evaluate OLEDs, color-tunable luminaires, and LED-based lighting that's integrated into furniture or building architectural elements. The organizers will further consider innovative products that don’t fit into the above categories on a case-by-case basis.

The winners for the indoor competition will be announced on March 20, 2013 at the LEDucation event in New York, NY. Meanwhile, the NGL organizers recently completed the judging of entries in the 2012 outdoor competition that involved 120 products from 43 manufacturers. The winners of that competition are to be announced at the Strategies in Light Conference scheduled for February 12-14, 2013 in Santa Clara, CA.