Widely speaking, the utilities don't have to pay for the transmission infrastructure, at least not the transmission infrastructure that is required to support these wind projects. That infrastructure would also be paid for by the wind project.

New England utilities are not allowed to own generation, which means that they're also not competing with the wind project for revenue.

In my opinion- at the end of the day, the reason these larger projects are moving slowly is simple: They're hard, and they're expensive. And land rights- particularly in New England- make the required transmission infrastructure to support the generation doubly hard and doubly expensive.