Apartment dwellers are the bane of utilities. When someone moves out, the account has to be closed and the meter turned off. When a new tenant moves in, someone has to drive out with a truck and flip it on again. "You have to physically turn it on," said Brian Alford, director of public affairs at OG&E, a utility in Oklahoma. In a recent trial with 6,600 apartments in Oklahoma City with Silver Spring Networks, OG&E was able to cut down the on/off cycling to ten seconds. Basically, someone flips a switch in the central office. That sort of metric is the sort of thing that could drive smart grid technologies. Although utilities will have to buy new meters to enable remote meter management, it's a lot cheaper in the long run than sending out people with trucks. Particularly in high turnover areas. The region where OG&E conducted its trial gets 10,000 services calls a year, an unusually high number. OG&E is applying with the local regulatory board to conduct a wider trial. Pacific Gas & Electric, the large California utility, is installing "hundreds of thousands" of Silver Spring meters a month, said Eric Dresselhuys, vice president and co-founder of Silver Spring. The utility also found that consumers managed to cut down their power consumption with smart meters. A screen in their home informed them about the rates and amount of power they were consuming during various times during the day. "There is price elasticity for electricity. If you send people information, they will act on it," said Dresselhuys. Retirees and the elderly are somewhat avid meter readers, he noted.