Italy installed a national smart grid before the term was even coined. The Italian utility Enel has installed 30 million smart meters since 2001, and it estimates savings at $6.74 million a year. The savings that come from smart grid technologies, however, aren't always easily predicted. In Italy, for instance, the money in homes saved doesn't come through demand response programs. Instead, it comes because the utility can deliver electricity at lower voltages to homes because of the meters and because of phase balancing, a process that better matches the output from the utility with the usage patterns of homes.