Best Answer: Hydropower would be a utility. Many cities use moving water to provide the mechanical energy to convert to electrical energy. It's clean and efficient. The large city I live near (Edmonton Alberta Canada) is a million and change. It uses hydropower.
There is a lot of expense used in generators that can supply the needs of a million people. There are power lines that have to be on every block of a city that is 20 km in diameter. There are generators that are huge. There are safety features in Canada that are prohibitively expensive to combat the cold weather.
We were in Yuma Arizona a couple of years ago when the power went out because it RAINED. It was not a heavy rain. It lasted just about an hour. It took 3 additional hours to before the power came on. We were staying at a Motel 6 and to get into your room, you had to use a magnetic card. The problem was, it ran on electricity so all in all we spent 4 hours in a Wendy's. Not that I'm complaining or anything, but Yuma doesn't require the kind of care we do to insure that no weather condition will leave us without utilities.
These utilities do not require that government be involved. If private enterprise can make a decent living, so be it. The problem is that companies like Enron (google it) or just go to this link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron
are dishonest thieves who got themselves into a massive pickle because the governments did not have proper regulation and they were greedy and careless and stupid. Government can provide the utilities and their only mandate is not to lose money. Private enterprise not only cannot lose money, they have to make enough to distribute some of it to their shareholders. That's no trivial expense, especially for a utility.
Hydropower does not necessarily need government support, but in my opinion, it does need government regulation and those regulations in Alberta are carefully designed and rigidly enforced. Alberta's a pretty good place to live because of things like that. So you can read through what I've written and pick out the advantages and disadvantages.