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Comment by bitmasher9 | Hacker News Reader

This is absolutely a no-brainer for municipalities. The private companies are charging a premium that they return to shareholders and give to executives. Municipalities have excellent access to credit at rates significantly lower than the premium charged by utility companies. The residents get cheaper access and more influence in how the utility is ran.

The number of people that pay for-profit companies for natural gas (heat), electricity, and water in North America is absolutely bonkers. There is a specific concern about foreign corporations purchasing water rights in the American west.

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Yep you literally get half price power if your city does it - https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/files/assets/public/v/5/utili...

I’m lucky enough to be in such an area. Note the city takes a bit of the above as profit too. Not that that’s a bad thing but it just goes to show how beneficial it is and how much more you’re paying by not doing it. Every city should do it asap.

Yeah it might be easy for municipal electricity to win on price when the bar is set at $0.42/kWh. Out here our evil private company is charging $0.11/kWh. I have serious doubts any municipality anywhere could deliver power for half that.

Cleveland Public Power rates online are <$0.10/kWh in the summer and <$0.05/kWh in the winter.

I’m not sure where “out here” is, but $0.11/kWh is not the national low for municipal power costs.

City municipalities aren’t exactly staffed with the sharpest knives in the drawer. Few have the ability to manage the basics of street maintenance let alone stand something up like a utility. A fool and their money are soon separated, color me skeptical.

That just sounds like a mismanaged city? Like obviously it might go wrong as well, just like how a private company might not have the sharpest knives.

Usually, for a private company, there is a forcing function (profit and loss) that incentivizes the management to ensure the knives are at least functional. Public employment doesn't have the same forcing function, and runs the risk of turning into a jobs program for the otherwise unemployable or a patronage network.

Of course, none of this is exclusive to one or the other.

Utility companies operate in a semi-monopolistic way, don’t aren’t subject to the same forcing function companies in more competitive industries are.

> City municipalities aren’t exactly staffed with the sharpest knives in the drawer

And private utility companies are?

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