Chief executives of four Ohio electrical utilities including Cinergy assured Gov. Bob Taft on Wednesday that they are better prepared now to prevent a repeat of last year's massive blackout, which started in northern Ohio.

With summer's peak-demand season almost upon us, Congress has not required national reliability standards for power companies, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission continues to let utilities sign on with multistate grid operators outside their geographic area. It may make market sense, but it defies engineering logic because system operators must balance power supply and demand across vast transmission grids on a split-second basis.

Congress should insist on mandatory reliability standards, and push for utilities in the same region to be grouped under a single grid operator.

The joint U.S.-Canada task force on the Aug. 14 blackout that affected 50 million people aimed its harshest criticism at Akron-based FirstEnergy. Both Cinergy and FirstEnergy belong to the Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO), but at the time of last year's failure FirstEnergy was not yet fully integrated into that system.

Ideally, every utility in a region ought to be monitored by a single system operator. But the regulatory commission has authorized two other companies in the region, Columbus-based American Electric Power and Commonwealth Edison (Chicago), to join a different system operator.

Cinergy spokesman Steve Brash says MISO has acted to improve its interfaces with other grid operators. But that's achieving power grid reliability the hard way.

National reliability standards would spell out requirements for transmission lines, maintenance, operator training, even tree trimming. The Aug. 14 blackout started with failures from overloaded FirstEnergy lines sagging onto overgrown trees.

Reliability standards can't guarantee a massive blackout from Michigan to Connecticut won't ever happen again. But if a power company violated such standards, the government could impose penalties and fines that don't exist now. The two-nation task force has already dragged problem-plagued utilities such as FirstEnergy into the center ring. The threat of penalties could help reinforce the message that one utility's goof-ups could put the nation's economy and security at grave risk.

Cinergy avoided last year's blackout, but recently spent $80 million upgrading its transmission system, performed 46 weeks of maintenance on generating units and increased training for control room operators.

The good news last August was that the grid worked as designed and shut down before generators and other hard-to-replace equipment were damaged. But some industries remain nervous. Gasoline refiners already operating at maximum capacity dread what another blackout could do to their short supplies. Federal authorities need to press for more reliability before the lights go out again.