The "fake costs" are not primarily from regulation as much as it is from the need to squeeze profit. For comparison, look at Silicon Valley Power which is owned and operated by the city of Santa Clara. SVP charges $0.175/kwh vs PGE $0.425/kwh. [1]
[1] - https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
Meanwhile Rural California is where the electricity is actually generated[1]; they're "subsidizing" urban use.
>SVP vs PG&E
This has nothing to do with the ownership model and everything to do with not being obligated to serve rural areas. They get to serve only lower cost dense areas
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Cali...
[1] - https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/PCG/income-statement?icid=...
This is based on total electrical energy production of 17,301 GWh, since PG&E doesn't seem to publish their total distributed energy.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%242.5+billion+%2F+17%2C301+...
$2,500,000,000 profit/70,000,000,000 kWh consumed is ~$0.035 per kWh.
So not exactly the smoking gun that CA ratepayers are looking for.
site: https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...