According this this story, and the the original BBC story, the UK population is going to be able to request a home energy meter that will tell us how much energy is being used and how much it is costing.

The meters themselves are a stop gap until we get proper smart meters, but they should help us monitor what is going on. Unfortunately these units wont be good enough that we'll be able to get and long term (or even short term) information without manually recording the details, but it's a good start.