Any such bill needs to confront NIMBYism which makes electric grids more vulnerable to supply disruption. It's beneficial to have generation occur in close proximity to consumption. Otherwise, a tree falls in Ohio, and the whole Northeast is in blackout. https://www.energy.gov/oe/services/electricity-policy-coordination-and-implementation/august-2003-blackout
A lot of other stuff went wrong / done wrong long before any tree was involved. Notice the distance between the generation and the load was not listed as the problem. A poorly operated system is likely to fail regardless of that distance.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdfCauses of the Blackout’s Initiation
The Ohio phase of the August 14, 2003, blackout
was caused by deficiencies in specific practices,
equipment, and human decisions by various
organizations that affected conditions and outcomes that afternoon—for example, insufficient
reactive power was an issue in the blackout, but
it was not a cause in itself. Rather, deficiencies in
corporate policies, lack of adherence to industry
policies, and inadequate management of reactive
power and voltage caused the blackout, rather
than the lack of reactive power. There are four
groups of causes for the blackout:
Group 1: FirstEnergy and ECAR failed to
assess and understand the inadequacies of
FE’s system, particularly with respect to
voltage instability and the vulnerability of
the Cleveland-Akron area, and FE did not
operate its system with appropriate voltage
criteria. (Note: This cause was not identified in
the Task Force’s Interim Report. It is based on
analysis completed by the investigative team
after the publication of the Interim Report.)
As detailed in Chapter 4:
A) FE failed to conduct rigorous long-term planning studies of its system, and neglected to
conduct appropriate multiple contingency or
extreme condition assessments. (See pages
37-39 and 41-43.)
B) FE did not conduct sufficient voltage analyses
for its Ohio control area and used operational
voltage criteria that did not reflect actual voltage stability conditions and needs. (See pages
31-37.)
C) ECAR (FE’s reliability council) did not conduct an independent review or analysis of
FE’s voltage criteria and operating needs,
thereby allowing FE to use inadequate practices without correction. (See page 39.)
D)Some of NERC’s planning and operational
requirements and standards were sufficiently
ambiguous that FE could interpret them to
include practices that were inadequate for reliable system operation. (See pages 31-33.)
Group 2: Inadequate situational awareness
at FirstEnergy. FE did not recognize or
understand the deteriorating condition of
its system.
As discussed in Chapter 5:
A) FE failed to ensure the security of its transmission system after significant unforeseen contingencies because it did not use an effective
contingency analysis capability on a routine
basis. (See pages 49-50 and 64.)
B) FE lacked procedures to ensure that its operators were continually aware of the functional
state of their critical monitoring tools. (See
pages 51-53, 56.)
C) FE control center computer support staff and
operations staff did not have effective internal
communications procedures. (See pages 54,
56, and 65-67.)
D) FE lacked procedures to test effectively the
functional state of its monitoring tools after
repairs were made. (See page 54.)
E) FE did not have additional or back-up monitoring tools to understand or visualize the status of their transmission system to facilitate
its operators’ understanding of transmission
system conditions after the failure of their primary monitoring/alarming systems. (See
pages 53, 56, and 65.)
Group 3: FE failed to manage adequately tree
growth in its transmission rights-of-way.
This failure was the common cause of the outage
of three FE 345-kV transmission lines and one
138-kV line. (See pages 57-64.)
Group 4: Failure of the interconnected grid’s
reliability organizations to provide effective
real-time diagnostic support.
As discussed in Chapter 5:
A) MISO did not have real-time data from
Dayton Power and Light’s Stuart-Atlanta
345-kV line incorporated into its state estimator (a system monitoring tool). This precluded
MISO from becoming aware of FE’s system
problems earlier and providing diagnostic
assistance or direction to FE. (See pages
49-50.)
B) MISO’s reliability coordinators were using
non-real-time data to support real-time
“flowgate” monitoring. This prevented MISO
from detecting an N-1 security violation in
FE’s system and from assisting FE in necessary relief actions. (See pages 48 and 63.)
C) MISO lacked an effective way to identify the
location and significance of transmission line
breaker operations reported by their Energy
Management System (EMS). Such information would have enabled MISO operators to
become aware earlier of important line outages.
D) PJM and MISO lacked joint procedures or
guidelines on when and how to coordinate a
security limit violation observed by one of
them in the other’s area due to a contingency
near their common boundary.
