Energy meter reading is still done manually even in some of the developed countries due to the cost of implementing them using only gsm modules. In developing countries the question of analog energy meter also arises. So to deal with the above said hurdles, in this paper we propose the use of zigbee instead of gsm at the consumer side and also the usage of image processing concept in case of analog meters. In the project we implement a basic prototype using 3 zigbees and a gsm module. The zigbee modules in each house together form a network and the data is transmitted to the server station. GSM module is used only at the server station to communicate the usage to the consumer. © Research India Publications.