alt Hacker NewsThere's no reason for not separating generation, distribution, and retail.
Those are completely different activities, with completely different competency requirements, economical and political characteristics.
Also, bundling them is an anti-competitive measure. What is important for generation in particular, that is a competitive market where you can have private companies.
That works in theory. In practice each company has their own overhead which increases their service fees.
They regulated nat gas in my state and the service fee is more than the gas consumed.