[ursAxZA]

I get the intuition behind fully socializing it, but I wouldn’t go that far. Single-operator systems lose redundancy fast, and that’s dangerous for infrastructure.

A layered mix — county-level public utilities, some private operators, and some hybrid/municipal entities — might be closer to a resilient structure.

Not clean or elegant, but fault-tolerant.

[littlecosmic]

You say this like it is a law of nature, but we can plan and build it directly if we want it. Redundancy is not something that only emerges from an indirect 4d-chess strategy of ownership mixes.

[gregbot]

Good point. For example, the TVA and BPA are federal agencies that produce electricity. Clearly publicly owned utilities can be successful.

[ursAxZA]

Exactly — if we want redundancy, we should plan and build it.

That’s why I offered one possible implementation as a hypothesis, not as a law of nature.

If you have a better non-ideal, real-world design in mind, I’d be interested to hear it — it makes the discussion much easier.

[RevEng]

I live in a province in Canada where the electrical system is owned and operated by a crown corporation. They are mandated to maintain a very high uptime and they do through several means including redundancy. Our electrical bills are cheaper than much of the US. It certainly can be done; there are other means than competition to ensure adequate service.