That's so typical.

Source: also US

Grid should be public and production should be privatised.

Same here and I just found out the majority shareholder of my electric company is black rock. And the same year our rates went up the highest is the same year the CEOs made a bunch of bonuses.

Because as a general rule governments aren't efficient running services and that's fine for a while but long term that means infrastructure isn't properly maintained which leads to service malfunction, which leads to privatization because someone else can do it better and competence appears because someone else things can do it better than the other or to collapse because things don't work anymore.

Source: I am Spanish, a lot of companies were privatized after the dictatorship because they weren't efficient and infrastructure was falling apart. Privatizing allowed competence which meant someone had to invest in infrastructure to be better than the other. Problem is now governments are confabulated with some of those companies to create oligopolies. For example my city has it's own water/trash company (half private half public) so no one is allowed to bid against them; you can imagine how that is going (from paying 35€ every 3 months to paying 65€ in one year), price goes up, no one can't complain or hire a cheaper one, while with cable and phone companies since Telefonica was privatized other companies popped out and you can have cheaper and better internet/phone/tv.

They required the choice between two different administrators.

Most US states have this. They mandate you can choose your energy provider.

Yes, but at scale it is significantly cheaper to build larger and distribute it. It also means people don't have to over invest in their own set up just to cover their peak usage. There is also a large amount of up front capital required to build with usually years before you get back what was invested. Its also almost impossible for renters or apartment buildings to do it themselves.

Water is essential to living.
Electricity is mostly essential.
Why these two utilities are privately owned is beyond me.

Public necessaries like energy, water, public transport etc should never have been handed over to companies to begin with in my opinion.

Yeah honestly even if we were at 100% renewables, the price has been set and people are used to it now. No company is going to voluntarily start discounting unless more competition enters the market to start a price war. So far most of the energy "competition" has gone bust.

You know why right?

The grid is constraint and because of this it makes prices really high where the congestion is. Now the logical thing is to allow a different price where there is free energy like in Scotland verse where it is constraint.

But! The issue is where it is constraint and that's south east England. And as everyone in the country knows no one gets anything in the UK unless south east England has more of it for less.

So higher prices in SE England is not going to happen. If it was the other way around I'm certain the government would say fuck the Scots they should have more wind power if they wanted cheap electricity.

Both. Both is good.

In many cities in America, private companies threaten cities demanding that they get paid to expand, or else they'll leave.

Comcast demanded they get city investments to expand wifi to more of the city and even promised free wifi to public places. And after millions of city dollars given, they said, "nevermind".

But your not thinking of the poor poor oil execs whom won't get their return on their bribe invenstment made to their super PAC.

It should be but here we are.

How do you want them to be for the people and not for corporations if you want them to subsidize an industry? At the end of the day that will be paid to corporations, and you are giving corporations more incentive to get into your congressperson's office to help them figure out how to divide it up. Why would you want more cash exchanged between them and more face time between them? Bad idea if you want corporations out of politics.

More money for [industry x] literally means the government working for some corporations. Doesn't matter what industry x is.

That's called artificially inflated prices

I live in Minnesota and the majority of the power produced in my area is Wind Turbines that are all pushing 5-10 years of use. The company operating them is well past the break even point and pure profit for every watt they get now but the price of energy is higher than ever.

Public companies or private?

Its still crazy how great solar can be when doing the maths based off his states solar farms. Imagine how great the numbers would be if the sunny parts of the world did solar too

Call me pessimistic. Companies say they switched from paper bills to digital bills for "the environment", and none of that trickles down back to the customer.

It's almost like utilities are a natural monopoly that do not fit within the economic ideology of "free market" capitalism.......

People seem to be forgetting that unless green power or nuclear power are socialized projects they would by default have to find a way to capitalize their products by some means. Whether it would be by capitalization via consumption rates, maintenance fees, or even subscription, a private business would have to be able to make ever increasing profits.

Have you looked at your power bill and seen how much of the bill is not power consumption?

Not in US, but after our power went private it literally doubled. The nice lady tried to convince me the "extra" charges were always there but not itemized, but while holding the previous bill with the same (within a few points) my usage was the same but the "fees" were as much as my power usage

In the long run, yes. In the short term, the grid upgrades are quite expensive.

One form of government investment is subsidized panels for homes so you rely on utilities less.

New datacenters should be heavily regulated for emissions (including sound) and water consumption and should provide their own power as much as possible (renewables and SMRs come to mind).
Except for AI, fuck those.