Track Home Energy Use with Solar Lamp
Sweden plans to have future homes come equipped with smart meters. But some folks want to know what’s up with their energy consumption now, and without having to look online all the time. Enter the concept Spark Lamp.
This lamp is truly one of the oddest things I’ve heard of, but could be kinda cool...kinda. During the day, you flip the lamp upside down so that the solar panels located on the bottom can charge up. Then at night, you flip it right side up and turn it on. It then connects to your Wi-Fi and changes to a certain color to show what your energy consumption is at compared to your monthly goal. The indicators are red, yellow and green and you can guess what they mean.
After about 3 seconds, the light turns to white and you can use it as a lamp. So it is an interesting little check-in device…that is only available in Sweden and that I don’t expect will become very popular. Yes, it is more multipurpose than a regular old solar powered light, but still. It would take some interesting planning on where to place the lamp in order for it to get needed sunlight to charge. It might prove to people that just jumping online is an easier way to check your energy consumption.
via: Cleantechnica
