Yes there are different energy retailers in different markets offering hourly priced tariffs, Tibber being an example. The deployment of the required smart metering varies widely between countries.
I agree. I have run quite a few Raspberry Pi over the years and so many of them died because of SD card corruption. Eventually I got a NanoPC T4 with built in eMMC and it’s been tugging along for a good 2 years with zero issues.