John Robb writes:

“In a small number of US states (Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and California), it’s legal to create a community power company that negotiates for power from suppliers on the community’s behalf. This power company doesn’t run the grid, which remains in the hands of the existing utility. See: The Cape Light Compact for an example for how this works. The legislation that makes this possible is “Community Choice Aggregation.”