That is not 100% true though. In Burbank, CA the power is city owned.

https://www.burbankwaterandpower.com/

In the bay area, Santa Clara has city owned power, and residents pay something like a third of what the rest of the bay area does per kilowatt hour.

Part of the inspiration for why SF is trying to kick out PGE and have municipal power.

I didn’t say it was 100% true and there are exceptions.

I don’t know the true distribution, but I’d wager the vast majority of the US is served by either a corporation or some non-government organization.

Now I know and it’s 1/7 or about 15% of Americans have government or community owned power. [0]

[0] https://www.publicpower.org/public-power

That there are city owned utilities doesn't seem to refute any of prepend's statement.

> In the US, power is a public utility.

A city owned utility is both a public utiliy because it offers a utility service to the public and a public utility because it is municipally owned.

> And regulated as such.

I expect Burbank W&P is regulated by the CPUC, same as other power utilities that operate in California.

> The providers can be private though and depends a lot on the location.

Many providers are private; this one isn't, and it depends on the location.

> Personally, I wouldn’t trust my city or county to operate a power plant and transmission lines. I’m happy that power is regulated by my state as a natural monopoly.

This is, like prepend's opinion, man. I assume they are truthfully expressing their trust and happiness. Even if they lived within the service area of Burbank W&P or another municipal power utility, they might not trust it.

As to power being a natural monopoly, it's hard to tell exactly given that it exists in a highly regulated market; but I don't know of any US markets where there is a choice for electrical distribution. You get the utility that serves your property, or you get to pay them to build their network to serve your property, or you get no utility power (and in some locations, no certiticate of occupancy). I'm sure there's some exceptions such as a lot that stradles the service areas or a lot with a high availability use that requirea feeds from multiple substations and it makes more sense to wire to a substation from a neighboring utility. And there's the legacy DC power networks in some old cities. But generally, there's no overbuilding of competing distribution lines; unlike say telecom where many areas have at least two of copper telephone, copper coax cable, and fiber telecom; and often several vendors if you're willing to pay commercial rates for cabling.

Palo Alto's power is city owned as well. I think we're building out fiber too.

Public infrastructure shouldn't be private. Imagine the nightmare of privately owned roads and highways.

A somewhat more prominent example of this model would be Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.