Re: energy in UK

No idea.  But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.

 Mmm. Dunno. I hope they last 5 years, but it is their problem.

Ours is outside so accessing it -- even replacing the meter itself -- can
be done without bothering the occupants.

I've been researching water meters with the goal of installing one on the
indoor loads and another on the outdoor.  But, most are very coarse resolution;
suitable for billing (you wouldn't care if you rounded the usage to the
nearest hundred cubic feet as any fraction would end up on NEXT month's
bill!) but not really for monitoring consumption in real time.

 I think mine (mechanical) while it was installed inside my garden, I looked and could measure down to litres. But the times I took the reading in a card provided by the company, they did not care for decimals (I think the unit is cubic meters). As you say, it doesn't matter, goes into the next month.

The (electronic) meter directly indicates cubic feet.  There's a "....."
display that likely allows you to resolve a tenth of a cubic foot,
"graphically".
But, at ~7.5 gallons per cubic foot, even the 1/10 resolution
means you're dealing with units of ~3 quarts.  Fine if you are billing
for consumption (above) but not much else.