Sweden and Norway are the only European examples I can think of. Power generation is often outside cities, yes, but closer. I'm 50 miles from a Nuclear power station, for example, which is not atypical. That's 1/10 the distance we're talking about.

Ideally it would be closer to the population, but I think the correct the way of looking at it is that there is a large, mostly untapped resource in the North which somehow has to be transported.