This is an excerpt from EERE Network News, a weekly electronic newsletter.

February 20, 2013

DOE Announces Winners of Next Generation Luminaires Design Competition

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on February 14 announced the winners of the fifth annual Next Generation Luminaires™ Design Competition for outdoor lighting. The competition was launched in 2008 to promote excellence in the design of energy-efficient commercial lighting fixtures, or "luminaires," that employ light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The "best-in-class" winners for four categories of outdoor lighting include The Lighting Quotient of West Haven, Connecticut, for its façade-lighting fixture, the fraqti™ Outdoor-Style S170 luminaire; Relume Technologies of Oxford, Michigan, for its Oxford decorative acorn fixture for streetscapes and walkways; GE Lighting of East Cleveland, Ohio, for its roadway lighting fixture, the Evolve™ LED Scalable Cobrahead luminaire; and Edge Lighting of Chicago, Illinois, for its decorative wall sconces, the "TV" and "Dial" LED luminaires.

The competition was sponsored by the Energy Department, the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, and the International Association of Lighting Designers. A panel of eight judges from the architectural lighting design community evaluated 120 outdoor lighting entries from 42 manufacturers based on lighting quality, appearance, construction, serviceability, efficacy, and value. In addition to the four "best-in-class" winners, 33 entries were judged as meeting the stringent requirements of the competition. These recognized winners represented a wide range of manufacturers and applications, including lighting for roadways, streetscapes, walkways, parking lots, parking garages, canopies, façades, and landscapes, as well as decorative lighting and wall-mounted area lighting.

Design competitions are a key part of the Energy Department's national strategy to accelerate solid-state lighting technology advances from laboratory to marketplace. Solid-state lighting, which includes both LED and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technologies, has the potential to save Americans $30 billion per year in energy costs by 2030. See the Energy Department Progress Alert and Solid-State Lighting website, and see the Next Generation Luminaires website for photos and details about all the winners of this year's competition.