Public utilities provide electric, gas, water or telephone service to customers in a specified area. Utilities have a duty to provide safe and adequate service on reasonable terms to anyone who lives within the service area on without discriminating between customers. Because most utilities operate in near monopolistic conditions, they can be heavily regulated by local, state, and federal authorities. Generally, the local and state agencies are called Public Service Commissions (PSC) or Public Utility Commissions (PUC). Municipal Utilities and Rural Electric Cooperatives may be unregulated though.
Fairfield is a city located in the northeastern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, USA. It is approximately 36 miles (58 km) from both the city of San Francisco and the city of Sacramento, approximately 31 miles (50 km) from Oakland, less than 18 miles (29 km) from Napa Valley, 16 miles from the Carquinez Bridge, and 13 miles from the Benicia Bridge. Fairfield was founded in 1859 by clippership captain Robert H. Waterman, and named after his former hometown of Fairfield, Connecticut. It is the home of Travis Air Force Base and the Jelly Belly jelly bean factory, and has a population of almost 107,000; slightly less than Vallejo, which is the Bay Area's ninth-largest city. It shares a border with its sister city, Suisun City. Other nearby cities include Vacaville, Benicia, Napa and Vallejo. Fairfield is the county seat of Solano County.