Many electricity meters installed since the mid 1980’s are equipped with an IEC1107 compliant optical interface. This gives a convenient method for the Electricity Company to access all manner of information held in the meter using a hand terminal. This simple project describes a neat IEC1107 to RS232 interface that together with some software allows a PC to talk to the meter and retrieve energy consumption information1.Among its prodigious output of documents describing international electrical standards the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) produced a specification IEC 1107 that defines a software communication protocol and the hardware necessary to pass information to and from electronic meters used to measure such things as electricity, gas and water consumption in the home and industry.