It’s astonishing that this is happening in America. It sounds more like Venezuela. And people are not rioting in the state capital.
If this were happening in Atlas Shrugged, the electric company would just walk away entirely, after shutting the power off everywhere, and the only lights would be from the fires. (”Brother, you asked for it!”)
California is not happening in Atlas Shrugged. Atlas Shrugged is happening in California.
Over-regulation and wishful thinking has already destroyed the electric utility here. Since the government didn't overtly take over the utility, they will now claim that capitalism was the problem.
The next step will be to appoint political managers to operate the utility. There will be a need for tax and rate hikes to pay for the improvements. Many of these improvements will be aimed at increasing "fairness". I already pay, I think, about three or four times as much as some others in the state per kilowatt-hour. That ratio will no doubt increase.
Inevitably, the government managers will fail to deliver electricity to the customers, their various projects will run out of money, and new limitations on the customers will have to be instituted. That will involve rotating outages (which have already been tried), power meters that limit the power flow to each customer, and government subsidies for the favored few who deserve power that they cannot afford. I doubt that I will be among them.
Despite all the "improvements" described above, there will be widespread unexpected outages and uncontrolled side-effects such as more fires, chemical contamination, and power plant accidents. I don't see this ending any better than Atlas Shrugged ended.