BERLIN — When Helmut Wallner heard that the energy company he worked for was looking for volunteers to be in isolation for at least a month to ensure the lights stayed on in Vienna during the coronavirus crisis, the decision to go was easy.

“I didn’t even need a second to think,” he said in a video call from the bed of a shipping container in the Simmering power plant, where he has been living with 20 others since March 20. “I was together with my wife, and we knew within seconds that I had to go.”

Mr. Wallner was one of 53 employees ultimately selected to enter isolation at four power stations across the Austrian capital run by the Wien Energie company, which provides power and heat to two million people in the city.

Days after Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria ordered public life in the country reduced to a minimum to try to counter the virus, Wien Energie’s crisis team began turning conference rooms into dormitories and organizing washing machines, fitness equipment and wireless internet in the power stations. These would become homes to the teams in isolation, which number six to 21 workers per squad.