Comment by EraYaN

And if you happen to be in some parts of Europe they will have a 6 pin connector that will send out data telegrams with all the stuff from the meter. DSMR is the standard that defines it for the Netherlands and port is called P1, seems to be (slowly) spreading. And you can also (wirelessly) pair a gas meter to the electricity meter to read that as well, and the new ones give you up to date data every second. Regulators CAN just make this happen clearly.