I think the biggest problem with neighborhood power plants would be the NIMBY problem. You would, with each place have to fight people who perceive its presence as a risk (dangerous, ugly, cancer causing, neighborhood character ruining, traffic creating, etc.), without the support of people who see it as a benefit (power!), but live to far away to care about these risks. Right now people largely don't care about wind turbines or solar farms, or reactors because they are far enough away that even people who buy into concerns about them, generally have no motivation to protest. If they had to go in neighborhoods, you'd suddenly find an increase in the number of people who were concerned that nuclear power would kill us all.
Also, DTE (the power company for SE Michigan) definitely allows customers to give back to the grid. If you are producing less than 20kw the only requirement is a way for them to cut the power off if they need to. If you are producing more than that, the requirements scale with your capacity, including things like an engineering review (at DTE's cost) to make sure the utility's local equipment will not be damaged. To make money from the power company, instead of just getting credit against your use of their power, you do need to register with the Federal Energy Regulation Commission. This is free and seems to involve filling out a form describing how your are generating the power (solar, wind, coal) and registering yourself as the person legally in charge of the production legally. If you are producing less than 20MW and are registered you are exempt from most federal laws regulating power production.
