The tremendous wind energy potential of the great plains of the U.S. and Canada is virtually untapped because the electrical grids connecting to the great cities in the East is either missing, inadequate, or obsolete. A critical priority for North America is modern, nation-spanning high-capacity energy grid, preferably hardened against CME or radiation events, I mentioned wind energy potential of the Great plains but equally important is the solar energy potential pf the western states all of it unrealized until we have a modern electrical grid.
@Ted Richards I must agree with you, but with reservation. For example, referring to the image: Mohave Generating Station This plant in Laughlin, Nevada, is gone today. It produced way over a billion watts, 1580 Megawatts, was coal-fired, commissioned in 1971, at which time Laughlin was still a nameless non-town. It was shut down in 2005. It's output was delivered via 2 lines of 500,000 volts each. Those lines fed Southern California, primarily. None of the aging parts of the national grid can be used in conjunction with this scale of operation, and it should be noted that many of the newer transmission lines operate on Direct Current, a capability non-existent much more than 25 or so years ago. My point is that, the two transmission lines are still in place, marching away across the desert. Plan was to build a Solar Plant on the property and utilize those existing lines. "On June 10, 2009, Southern California Edison announced that the Mohave Generating Station would be decommissioned and all generating equipment would be removed from the site. Later, SCE announced that all administrative buildings on site would also be razed. The only structure remaining on the property will be the 500kV switchyard, which will continue to serve as a switching location for the bulk power system as well as provide electricity to a nearby Nevada Power substation supplying the Laughlin area. Dismantling got underway in October 2009 and is expected to take 2 years and cost $30 million. About 300 staff lost their jobs when the plant was closed. On March 11, 2011, the 500-foot (150 m) exhaust stack, a longtime landmark of the Laughlin/Bullhead City area, was felled by explosives." My wife and I happened to be present in the area in 2011 as "snowbirds", and watched the felling of the stack, from a good vantage point. The information quoted is from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohave_Power_Station#Shutdown Frank