What's the reason to avoid smart meters?
Also to enable "surge pricing" such that folks ration of disconnect themselves, rather than pay the surge price.
Other than that, they don't really have a benefit for the user, the details one variable use could simply be monitored by manual reading on a weekly basis.
If someone wanted, they could drive up to my house and see the colour of my door. The fact that someone has always been able to create a database of front door colours isn't inherently a data leak.
A UUID and electricity usage for the past half hour for a house in the general vicinity isn't useful. Even if you could put a name to that UUID, I struggle to think of how that would be a major issue. Especially considering with a thermal camera, and assuming construction details from the age and type of the house, you could already estimate your neighbours energy usage anyway.
Remote shutoff on the other hand....
In America, yes. Here the meter->gateway is encrypted zigbee, the gateway is over 3/4g.
However the remote contactor is more of an issue. You can be turned off remotely without much ceremony.
In the UK only "central" England and south transmits data over the mobile network. In northern England and Scotland, the data is transmitted over UHF radio.
The downside is that the non cellular backhaul is provided by arquiva, who are shits.