>4+ private utility companies all competing with each other.

does every house have 4+ water lines, gas lines, etc. running to it?

if not, i'm not sure what you mean.

I imagine this works just like with electricity. You have generation capacity, with commercial entities buying or owning generation capacity and selling the resource to consumers through community owned last mile infrastructure. The sellers need to tally up and reconcile/settle their generated capacity at some frequency (not sure if daily, monthly, yearly).