Every unplanned decision to generate power uptown rather than down creates similar problems. Because regulators can be divested in the process, and with them the anti-economic fringe of environmentalism. Regulating monopoly rates never works well. Similarly, an aluminum factory buying kilowatt-hours in predictable bulk is far cheaper to serve than a small homeowner, but politically savvy regulators always try to nudge price breaks in the other direction. It happens with every utility.
Regulated prices drift inexorably away from costs, and inefficiencies compound year by year.
The more territory you regulate, the more lavishly inefficient everything gets. So all in all, it's probably worth accepting new problems running power lines, if you can deregulate generation in exchange. The wheeling of electric power across state lines, already commonplace, illustrates the possibilities. When people's-republic regulators all but ban new power plants in California, conniving capitalists in Utah just build twice as fast, and California's lights stay lit. Woodstock greens promised we would someday run our toasters by burning cow dung in the basement.