People living in Columbiana and four other Northeast Ohio counties may be seeing helicopters hovering around power lines.

FirstEnergy subsidiary American Transmission Systems has announced that is using helicopters and ground crews to replace more than 1,100 insulators along a 68-mile transmission line corridor that runs through Carroll, Columbiana, Jefferson, Stark, and Summit counties.

The project is part of a multi-year, $7 billion initiative designed to upgrade FirstEnergy's transmission system with advanced equipment and technologies designed to reinforce the power grid and help reduce the frequency and duration of customer outages.

The upgrade is being conducted on the 345-kilovolt transmission line running northwest from a substation in Stratton, Ohio, to a substation in Wadsworth, Ohio.

 Insulators separate high-voltage transmission lines from their grounded support towers and help maintain safe, consistent delivery of power while preventing the current from traveling through the structures, according to FirstEnergy.

FirstEnergy crews will perform a portion of the insulator replacement work between Wadsworth and New Franklin, Ohio, while most of the replacements will be handled by a contractor that carries linemen to the top of the 80-foot towers via helicopter.

The linemen will be harnessed and lowered down onto each structure to install the new insulators, and the helicopter will also lower the new materials for the assembly and carry the old materials away.

FirstEnergy says the aerial method is faster and more efficient than deploying ground crews to each structure, which would require the creation of access roads for large trucks and equipment.

ATSI began replacing the insulators in July and expects to complete the replacements on 376 transmission structures along the corridor by this fall.

The transmission line has been de-energized until the work is complete but is not disrupting service to customers, who are being served by an alternate power feed.