Measuring luminescence in a fluorescence plate reader
I am René Inckemann and  I am PhD student at the Max Planck Institute in Marburg, Germany. In my PhD I am using luminescence on a regular basis and I was also responsible to organize some of our Platereaders.
So therefore I can tell you that you need a Platereader which is able to measure luminescence and you can not simply take a fluorescence platereader. The hardware for measuring luminescence and fluorescence is different.
However many Platereader models in these days already come with both options for the hardware, which means that you can measure luminescence and fluorescence in the same device. You just have to check your platereader model if it is capable of measuring luminescence.So you don't need a seperate platereader just for luminescence, but you need one, which has the luminescence addon installed.
Regarding your idea for normalizing luminescence, I also have strong interest in that and we have already started working on that. Maybe we can exchange ideas at some point?