My general metric for whether something should be a function of government (or so heavily regulated by government that the distinction is moot) is "Does this business function best as a monopoly?" By default, I assume everything that does should be a government function, and everything that shouldn't should be regulated to avoid becoming a monopoly.
So by default, I would assume that electricity distribution should be a government function, but electric generation could probably work fine as a set of non-monopolies competing to feed energy into the publicly-run grid at the lowest prices.
I agree that distribution should be gov regulated, and it is. I also agree that generation should be open market (it is, and those companies are still regulated by NERC, etc). That said, the distribution companies in CA are publicly traded... and that is a problem IMO.
So by default, I would assume that electricity distribution should be a government function, but electric generation could probably work fine as a set of non-monopolies competing to feed energy into the publicly-run grid at the lowest prices.