London listed company brought electricity to Kolkatta, 1897, & same city faced blackout in 2020.
Few things were done by Kolkatta, Mumbai-1905, Jamshedpur(JUSCO), Ahmedabad-1913, kind of cities successfully, & some cities at least tried like, Kanpur, Bhiwandi, Agra, Surat.
1996 onwards, solutions recommended, but the progress has been slow, except some unbundling initiatives of separating generation, & distribution.
Due to private sector & trading, power generation companies are more or less sorted except payment issues from distribution companies.
J B Patnaik, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Mayawati Ji, period saw some decisions on privatisation of distribution companies in few highest T&D loss cities.
You shift to cities like Mumbai, Ahmedabad, & you don’t need any Inverter or D G Set. You don’t see power lines hanging on poles, most power lines underground, which ensures uninterrupted power supply during cyclone or flood. Few tried SIM controlled meters.
Though the learnings of all these cities never got replicated across India.
The biggest reason of better service & better city power infra, was willingness to give freedom to these Pvt companies for years. These companies kept on improving tech & infra while maintaining profitability of company.