What you mentioned exists in Houston for sure, and quite possibly elsewhere. It's probably not perfect but it's HUGELY better than state approved utility monopolies.
1. In FL I was in a fairly small college town, 150k people. GRU was the utility company. We paid $13/mo connection fee plus a marginal rate of $0.084/kWh (plus the "fuel adjustment" which is of course never in your favor) since it was basically impossible to use less in the heat (https://www.gru.com/Portals/0/Legacy/Pdf/RatesCharges.pdf). In TX I now pay $0.08 with no connection fee or adjustments of which about $0.02/kWh goes for line maintenance and if I commit to buying at least 2MWh/mo I can pay even less.
2. A friend from Florida had a brother who was working for the Florida Utility Commission (http://www.psc.state.fl.us/) approving or denying utilities' requests to raise their rates. Once he's been there for a few years his plan is to become a consultant to help the utility companies game the system and raise their rates.
http://www.powertochoose.org/
Two anecdotes:
1. In FL I was in a fairly small college town, 150k people. GRU was the utility company. We paid $13/mo connection fee plus a marginal rate of $0.084/kWh (plus the "fuel adjustment" which is of course never in your favor) since it was basically impossible to use less in the heat (https://www.gru.com/Portals/0/Legacy/Pdf/RatesCharges.pdf). In TX I now pay $0.08 with no connection fee or adjustments of which about $0.02/kWh goes for line maintenance and if I commit to buying at least 2MWh/mo I can pay even less.
2. A friend from Florida had a brother who was working for the Florida Utility Commission (http://www.psc.state.fl.us/) approving or denying utilities' requests to raise their rates. Once he's been there for a few years his plan is to become a consultant to help the utility companies game the system and raise their rates.