Electricity is regulated. Not perfectly, but regulated much more than datacenters. Supposedly they have a cap on earnings to keep costs "low". As a society we recognize that essential services, as you say datacenters are becoming, need checks and balances.

Also, electricity being publicly owned (as in: everyone within a town is a shareholder with 1 share of the public utility company with the ability to get information about its running, fire the board with enough votes, etc) would be great.

The common narrative is state-owned vs privately owned, but what about community owned? What if the people the utility directly affects were shareholders? They might be incentivized to actually upkeep it well and keep costs low.

And into this scheme when investment in new technology is needed, you then could have open meetings and plans on how the state / gov money is to be used, instead of going into the black hole of utility companies that are dramatically inefficient and corrupt.