“Is this drill primarily to deal with ‘citizen control’ rather than ways to restart the grid?”
It is both. In the past, the assumption was the grid would come back on within hours so it was specialized to get the grid back up. This time, the assumption is the grid is NOT coming back on for a long period of time. That is why there are hospitals and delivery systems of food and delivery of water systems and other businesses delivering necessary items of life, involved. The drill will last two days.
In the fifties some southern schools practiced evacuations to get kids out of town in the event of a ‘atomic bomb’ attack. Parents would come to the school, kids would get in the cars (five kids to a car) parents would drive around the block and drop the kids back off at the school. Even then some of us wanted to know what ‘the plan’ was... We were told in the event of a real attack kids would be driven to a field out of town and left there. Period. No parents, no food, no water, just ‘out of town’.... Back then planning was done by men of action: 'We gotta do SOMETHING' types.
My suggestion is a two week drill. The teams arrive at their destinations and there's no gas in their cars, no water beyond a 2 day supply, no heating or air conditioning. No electricity. Their goal is to move 8 tons of food 400 miles...in 6 days. Oh, and no cell phones or computers beyond 5 days... and no internet...