While I haven’t gotten my lights set up like this, I do use home assistant, just like the author and it is simply amazing. For things like this, the setup can get quite complex, but the main benefit is that it provides a unified interface to any connected device in your home.

My main use case is energy tracking: it does a marvelous job collecting and graphing data across a bunch of different sources: from the solar panels from one vendor, the semi proprietary smart meter protocol my electricity company has, weather data etc. Having all that data together in 1 place is an invaluable tool to make any investment decisions on energy improvements to our house.

How/what are you using to monitor your smart meter?

makr17

Not OP, but in my jurisdiction the smart power meters broadcast consumption as SCM at 900MHz. rtlamr

https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr

does a good job of receiving and decoding those broadcasts using a cheap SDR. My local water utility also broadcasts consumption as SCM+, also 900MHz. I'm able to grab both with the single SDR.