My California city owns its electric utility. We pay much lower rates than the surrounding cities that are serviced by Edison and we haven’t had any brownouts.
The costs come partly from maintaining enormous lengths of distribution and transmission lines serving few customers. This is part of the obligation to serve clause public utilities are stuck with.
Add to that new obligations to purchase electricity uneconomically. And besides that also they are excused from much of the regulatory burden.
Many communities with fairly dense customer bases want out of the utilities system as they don’t get stuck with that requirement to serve scattered customers. Even more so if they own generation facilities, as many irrigation districts do.
But in the end someone will get caught holding the bag, with uneconomic territory, infrastructure, regulation, and expensive generation.