California
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I also experienced much lower rates when I was living in Sacramento, which also has a municipal electric utility SMUD.
Fuck PG&E.
One thing to keep in mind is that I'm pretty sure that PG&E services a lot of rural areas, which are less-densely-populated, and thus more expensive to provide service to.
checks
Yeah.
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_MAPS_Service%20Area%20Map.pdf
There might be government subsidy as well, but looking at PG&E's rate schedule, it's fixed across its service area.
https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/residential-electric-rate-plan-pricing.pdf
That probably means that cities are partly footing the cost of providing electricity to rural areas via buying more-expensive electricity than would otherwise be necessary.
If one wants to have this subsidy in place
and one might not
then switching to a local utility would also potentially require adopting some sort of tax.
On the other hand, rural power might just be more expensive, and unreliable, because PG&E has siphoned off maintenance funds towards executive pay and shareholder value.