> SMUD basically bought out PG&E's system in Sacramento County (essentially through eminent domain, which was a lot more difficult, took a lot longer, and was a lot more expensive than you might think).

Eminent domain is always more expensive than negotiated purchases. It was also a political movement because during he campaign for voting on the takeover, people would give free rides to others waiting for the street cars, for the sole purpose of hurting (PG&E's) streetcar revenue.

>It took several decades to fix up the messes that PG&E left,

OK, what sort of "messes" did PG&E leave?

>SMUD has some of the lowest rates in the state, even after raising them and instituting mandatory Time of Use rates a couple of years ago (fixed rate is still available, with significant limitations).

SMUD's (or any other municipal district's) out-of-pocket generation, transmission, and distribution costs aren't appreciably less than those for a privately owned utility. Not only this, there is reduced incentive toward operational efficiencies because there are no dividends which need paying. SMUD's "low rates" are a largely result of being tax exempt. PG&E still has all the natural gas service in the SMUD electric service area, and it has had time of use electricity rates for at least 6 years.

> As a municipal utility, SMUD operates its own grid; it's not subject to the ISO. They're not very transparent about how they do that. But the results are clear: while PG&E and SCE and SDG&E have rolling blackouts (thanks to ISO orders) and public safety power shutoffs (PG&E still blacks out far more areas for far longer than the other 2 big private utilities),

You fail to take into account the relative sizes of the service areas of the three companies. How much of the service area of "the other two" utilities is in the fire-prone Sierra Nevada?

> SMUD made it through both hot spells this summer with few outages (mostly equipment-caused).

SMUD joined the ISO in 2019. The LADWP joined in 2017.

> So: elected "communists" got no shortages.

While SMUD is "socialistic" in nature, it isn't "communistic", and it will be subject to the same ISO machinations as PG&E, SoCalEdison, and the rest.

> Oh, and PG&E used to run Sacramento's streetcars. That didn't survive WW2 by long.-

A lot of power companies also operated streetcar systems and interurban railways, but some sort of IRS ruling in the 1930s forced divestiture. PG&E's sale of its Sac streetcar system (to NCL) came along quite late, probably postponed by the War.