How Does Mutual Aid Work?

In preparation for emergencies, electric companies have mutual assistance agreements with each other that allow them to temporarily increase their workforce by requesting crews to help respond to major outage events. This usually occurs during significant storms.

Mutual aid requests work through a network of utilities in the United States and Canada. This network is a critical part of storm response. When called upon, a company sends skilled restoration workers—both company employees and contractors—along with specialized equipment to help speed restoration.

Deploying restoration workers from other companies helps:

• Scale up the number of crews efficiently and effectively
• Restore power faster
• Companies maintain an appropriate amount of crews during normal operations, knowing they can ask for help only when it’s needed

Helping After Helene

Approximately 40 line crews and support personnel from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire spent seven days in southwest Virginia (Sept. 30-Oct. 6) to assist American Electric Power subsidiary Appalachian Power in restoring power to the 75,820 customers who lost their electricity due to the powerful impact of Hurricane Helene. 

The Eversource team was part of a restoration force of more than 7,300 people that included mutual assistance crews from 27 states. The Appalachian Power restoration effort replaced 1,455 poles, 214 miles of wire and 438 transformers.

Our crews worked in areas that included mountainous terrain and towns where flooding damaged equipment, roads and bridges.

• Many poles and damaged equipment were inaccessible for bucket trucks, requiring crews to climb the poles and carry in new equipment.
• Four Trax machines, with tank-like treads, helped Eversource crews get to hard-to-reach locations. Some jobs required significant walking to bring in equipment and inspect other portions of distribution lines.
• The Eversource team began to use drones to help them inspect other sections of distribution line.
• Eversource crews worked in a distribution line right of way on Whitetop Mountain, which has an elevation of 5,520 feet above sea level. Crews cut down damaged eight poles, dug out the bottom of the pole by hand and dug holes for new utility poles that were put in place by a helicopter. Then, the crews restrung downed distribution lines onto the new eight new poles.