[r00fus]

Hopefully what's dying is the concept of privately owned utilities. Everyone knows that, unless they're properly regulated, these eventually turn into a rent-seeking behemoths that corrupt the government (or vice-versa).

However, what will likely happen is that these private utilities will see the writing on the wall and instead do what PG&E is doing in CA and just start charging "transmission fees" to keep their rates even higher despite massive daytime solar abundance.

Everywhere there is state/municipal owned utilities it's almost always considerable cheaper than private.

[Marsymars]

> Everywhere there is state/municipal owned utilities it's almost always considerable cheaper than private.

Not everywhere, it's really the regulation that matters, not just the ownership - here in Alberta we've got a market where we get municipally-owned utilities where we still get high rates comprising of energy fees + transmission fees + distribution fees.

[stephen_g]

Yeah, I'm fine with there being a market where private generators can sell power to the grid, but the poles and wires need to be publicly owned.

I don't know how there are still some that haven't worked out that a privatised natural monopoly is one of the worst ownership structures for anything important - as if multiple other companies could ever build a other electricity transmission networks on top of each other in the same area (or water and sewer systems, etc.) and provide actual competition! It's impossible and ludicrous.