In my home state of Victoria Australia the government had a program to give out these powerpal[1] units for free that could measure your usage in realtime using the flashing led on our smart meters, we also require all energy grid operators (the people who own the poles and wires) to have an energy portal where users can get near realtime data to the nearest 30mins, soon to be 5 with some new legislation.
The former most people have no idea about but the powerpal has been a smashing success for consumers to understand what is using energy.