The ongoing saga between the City of Boulder, Colorado, and local utility Xcel Energy seems to have reached the final chapter, with the city having placed its $94mn bid for specific Xcel assets – apparently its final offer. In California, a former chief regulator is calling for the state to go a step further and takeover the entirety of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and should this start a trend, the crossover between smart grid and smart city applications could become considerably easier. Municipal utilities, owned by the cities or regions they serve, are better placed to consider the overlap between their smart grid deployments and the emerging smart cities, mostly due to the diminished profit motivation and that they…