>Rural power was always expensive,

But not ruinously so? What changed? The rules (both public and private).

> It's not for the benefit of the cities, and driven by corporate risk management.

Which is driven by laws and courts and precedents and best practices and recommendations and beurocratic rules that come from where?

Regardless this has nothing to do with city and everything to do with rich and out of touch.

I'm sure PG&E would be happy to build worse stuff if they weren't sticking their neck out by doing so.

Kind of like how my city would be happy to simply replace it's infrastructure but the state will take a bunch of money away elsewhere if we did that. Of course, if we weren't paying the state taxes we could afford it from scratch ourselves but I digress.