This week, NPR has been running a series called Power Hungry: Reinventing the U.S. Electric Grid. There’s a whole lot of good information there about renewable energy and the need for improvements to the grid in order to get wind and solar power into our homes. You can find the whole series at the link above.

Or, for one quick highlight, here’s a link to one great graphic on Visualizing the Grid. This map shows just about everything you might want to know about electricity in the United States. What does the grid look like now? Where are new power lines being proposed? Where are the best solar and wind resources? Take a look and find out.

Wouldn’t it be great if more of our electricity came from wind and solar power? There are a lot of good reasons the United States should start generating more electricity from renewable sources. But what will it take to make that happen?

One thing we are likely to need is an upgraded, expanded electric grid with more transmission lines extending to the sunniest and windiest parts of the country. Today, there’s a great article in the New York Times that does a good job of explaining the connections between transmission upgrades and developing renewable energy.

You can find another good discussion of the need for grid improvements here in this recent article from Renewable Energy World. It was originally published by the American Wind Energy Association, and includes many details about how upgrades to the grid could help speed up the development of wind energy.

 It’s also worth mentioning that some individual states are already leading the way with transmission upgrades — notably Texas.

Do you think the United States needs to upgrade its electrical grid? Tell us your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

Photo by Tom Wald/Istockphoto

Texas is already the U.S. leader in wind power with about 5,300 megawatts of installed wind capacity, but that lead is likely to get even bigger thanks to a new multi-billion dollar transmission upgrade that was just approved by Texas regulators.

Transmission capacity is a frequent stumbling block for windy parts of the world that want to put up more wind turbines. That’s because utility-scale wind projects require high voltage lines to carry the electricity where it’s needed. The transmission upgrades in Texas will make it much easier to build new wind power projects because they will help connect windy West Texas with the state’s largest cities.

Read More:

Texas Approves a $4.93 Billion Wind-Power Project, New York Times, New York Times

Texas to Spend $4.93 Billion on Transmission Lines for Wind Power, EERE