Staying Connected: Redefining Mutual Assistance in a Virtual World

Electricity Canada: The Grid 2022

Aika Mbatia

Coordinator, Mutual Assistance Program, Electricity Canada

For almost a decade, Mutual Assistance agreements across North America have played a major role in strengthening and building resilience in the electricity sector. With the aim of providing a forum to ensure safe, effective, and coordinated Mutual Assistance, initiatives like the North Atlantic Mutual Assistance Group (NAMAG) have empowered member utilities to quickly action regional response and service restoration for their customers when hit by emergency events1. Participating utilities in Canada have been able to send crews, tools and equipment freely, as well as build professional networks with our U.S. neighbours, where most of the need for mutual aid exists. While these agreements equipped electricity companies to share best practices and plan for other significant events such as work stoppage, civic unrest, or political events, no one was prepared or could have planned for a global pandemic.

Very quickly, the unidentified gaps within these agreements became evident as governments across the world, including Canada and the U.S., imposed mandates and restrictive measures to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and ensure people’s safety. For existing Mutual Assistance agreements, these measures led to disruptions in utilities’ ability to guarantee a reliable and timely response, and increased the risk of lineworkers contracting COVID-19 during deployment, especially for smaller utilities2 . Adjusting to this new reality meant having to redefine Mutual Assistance networks to address the rising need for a more centralized and fulsome presence across Canada. This sparked conversations on creating regional Mutual Assistance groups aimed to improve the resiliency of the Canadian electricity sector through

Electricity Canada: The Grid 2022

strengthening members’ emergency management and Mutual Assistance capabilities by promoting inter-utility emergency management partnerships across Canada.

By virtue of its structure, Electricity Canada allows members to come together and work collaboratively even when separated by vast distances. With COVID-19 halting most of the Mutual Assistance activities between the Canada-U.S. border, Electricity Canada, in collaboration with Hydro One and Toronto Hydro, launched the Ontario Mutual Assistance Group (OnMAG) late in 2020, as a pilot initiative aiming to provide a single point-of-contact for utilities when requesting personnel or materials during emergencies. The shift to regionalized Mutual Assistance within the Canadian electricity sector was easily achieved through new technological advancements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic which allowed for virtual work to be as productive as in person work. Thanks to this change, the close geographic proximity of members ensures a more efficient exchange and speedy response, with minimal disruptions as participants operate under the same set of standards.

On the weekend of December 11th, 2021, and into the following week, OnMAG was activated for the first time following a major winter storm and high winds that shook southern Ontario. Electricity Canada successfully facilitated the coordination of OnMAG member utilities that were collectively faced with power outages for 400,000+ customers. The coordination helped provide timely updates from both utilities requesting aid and those able to offer crews and equipment. Through the OnMAG program, the power to hundreds of thousands of customers was restored quickly and safely. We are extremely proud of the program and its potential. The virtual tools adapted through the pandemic have improved the Mutual Assistance systems and promoted a more centralized approach where utilities of varying sizes across Ontario are guaranteed the ability to seek and offer coordinated assistance, as well as status updates within a short timeframe, while still ensuring the safety and wellbeing of their lineworkers during deployment. After a year-long pilot, OnMAG has now officially launched.

With the current challenges brought by climate change, there is a rising need for regionalized Mutual Assistance networks as utilities continue to face more hazardous weather events like storms, wildfires and floods requiring more manpower and resources for service restoration and minimizing disruptions to their customers.

Likewise, the growing shift to a Net Zero world, and rising conversations on decarbonization and electrification calls for Canadian utilities to work closely together to provide sustainable electricity for all. Ultimately, as OnMAG continues to grow and more utilities continue to benefit from the coordinated Mutual Assistance network, more agreements will be called for as utilities across Canada adapt to new regional assistance networks. You can find more information about OnMAG on Electricity Canada’s website.

1 NAMAG Guidelines 2 Switzer, D., Wang, W., & Hirschvogel, L. (2020). Municipal Utilities and COVID-19.

Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0275074020941711