I think that the gov't gave smart meter installation targets to the energy providers so they didn't have much choice but find people willing to have them installed.
I sometimes look at both the meter read out unit and the daily consumption data in my Ovo account. However, while it is interesting to see that my gas bill almost doubled between last Monday and Tuesday (when the weather turned chilly) there's not much I can do about it. On the other hand, the daily electricity consumption is almost constant except when the wife decides to have a cooking session and loves to have pans bubbling away. But there's not much I can do about that either!