The Spark Lamp by Beverly Ng, is a decorative modern solar lamp, but more importantly it is an energy monitoring system aimed at educating people about home energy consumption.  It was designed to work in conjunction with a Swedish concept to deal with the energy crisis.

The idea is that the lamp would work with an energy monitoring system and a website where you enter a monthly energy consumption goal on the site according to your motivation (eg. money, carbon footprints, discounts, etc).  The lamp then acts as a visual reminder and indicator of your progress.  During the day you place it upside down in the window (so it takes the shape of a plant) and the suns rays charge the lamp through the built in solar panel.  Then at night you flip it over, which activates a WiFi switch and the lamp turns on.  By connecting wireless to the Internet, it will monitor your home energy and for a few seconds after you turn it on, it will glow red if you are below your target, yellow if you're on target and green if you are above your target.  After the first few seconds it turns to a regular white glow.  See the charts below...

Source: Design Zen