But it's a circular problem. The price wouldn't be exorbitant if these rural areas were left to their own devices. But their utility build outs must be done per rules passed at the behest of the richer urban areas.

We're dealing with this bullshit in my own city in another state. From the parks to the roads to the sidewalks to the library every goddamn thing we touch gets driven up to the point of "can't actually do what we wanted" in cost because some rich assholes 100mi away in the vicinity of the capitol have taken a "build it fancy and rich or don't build it at all" attitude and enshrined that in state law and rules.

Sometimes they'll be so kind as to eat part of the cost with state grants, as long as we sell our freedom away in other ways.

Rural power was always expensive, but now due to wildfire risk, it needs to be ruinously expensive. It's not for the benefit of the cities, and driven by corporate risk management.