Palo Alto and Santa Clara both have "city owned utilities". Those utilities don't produce power, they don't bring power into the cities, they may not even distribute power within the cities.

What they do do is buy power and sell it to the residents.

Thanks to 1930s laws, they get first claim on the least expensive power sources in California.

Both Santa Clara and Palo Alto "power companies" have also managed to minimize the "hey, there's a large pile of money and if we only raise rates just a bit, think of all the good that we could do."

I mention that because San Jose has started a local "utility" that doesn't have appreciably lower rates than PG&E.

The problem in my neighborhood (literally right across the 101 from the Google MTV campus) was that PG&E never bothered to bury the lines, and the overhead lines were poorly maintained and overgrown by trees. So whenever there was wind, branches would drop, and take out the power. We'd have an outtage quite regularly.

Contrast to my neighborhoods in other states where the power wires were buried, and the only times we were without power was when the transmission lines to the entire neighborhood were taken out by weather far more severe than I ever saw in CA.

Density. PG&E needs to cover a lot of more rural land including many fire prone areas which the more local municipal services do not