Itron Inc. has announced a contract with Snapping Shoals Electric Membership Cooperative (EMC) just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, to provide Distribution Staker, Itron’s new software solution to streamline distribution system and line design.

Snapping Shoals EMC serves some of the faster growing counties in the nation. To keep pace with that growth and the need for new distribution infrastructure, it has turned to Itron’s Distribution Staker to automate and streamline its distribution design staking process. Staking has always been a manual process for the 67-year-old cooperative. But with the explosive growth in its eight-county service area, manual design methods using paper are too slow and cumbersome, said Mike Milligan, Snapping Shoals’ systems engineer.

Snapping Shoals selected Itron’s Distribution Staker software to help its 12-person staking team provide better service and faster turnaround on projects by automating much of that process and eliminating inefficient paper-based design methods. Distribution Staker combines robust CAD rendering and editing capabilities with intuitive design and efficiency tools to deliver the automation and efficiency of computer-aided distribution design. The tool also has many features that streamline utility workflows and reduce design cycle times to maximize the productivity of scarce design resources. By January 2006, Snapping Shoals will convert all staking designs to Distribution Staker.

“We picked Itron because their programming technology, customer service, and design philosophy seemed to be well aligned with our business goals,” said Milligan. “Distribution Staker is easy for our designers to use in the field, and it’s compatible with our billing, mapping and other systems.”

“Distribution Staker was developed by engineers for engineers, with ease-of-use as a top priority,” said Mike Penberthy, director of Customer Engineering for Itron’s software solutions group.