Oct. 30--The rows of white turbines spinning over wheat fields and ridgelines in eastern Oregon are ample evidence that renewable energy from wind is real and growing.

So much so that the aging network of transmission lines and power stations that carries energy around the region is loaded to its limits.

But wind developers are just getting started. And thousands of miles of new power lines carried by skyscraper-sized steel towers will need to be laid across deserts, farms and forests as more wind farms rise in farther-flung corners of Oregon and the West.

It won't be cheap, or without controversy.

More than half of Oregon is public land that Oregonians value for recreation, unobstructed vistas and habitat for sensitive species. And the cleared corridors that accommodate such transmission lines cut a wide swath.

Expanding the power grid is one trade-off of the national effort to expand clean energy technology and combat climate change.

"There's no question that we are changing the face of the state right now," said Brent Fenty, executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association in Bend, which is tracking transmission proposals in eastern Oregon. "And the important part is that we do that in a way that is responsible and reflects our values."

Energy experts have long lamented the inadequacy of the nation's energy grid. The federal government estimates that even though electricity demand has increased nationally by a quarter since 1990, construction of new transmission facilities has slowed.

The Department of Energy also says $60 billion in new investment in transmission, or about 12,650 miles of new lines nationwide, is needed by 2030 to get 20 percent of power from wind.

Oregon ranks fifth among states for wind power capacity. It now gets 7 percent of its power from wind, versus 1 percent a few years ago. And the state will require large utilities to source a quarter of the power they sell from renewable resources such as wind by 2025.

The creation of federal dams such as Bonneville over the past century was accompanied by the build-out of major new transmission lines to carry the power they produced. And over the past decade, excess capacity on those old lines -- due in no small part to the disappearance of energy-eating aluminum smelters -- has been filled up by new wind projects.

But now those lines are getting full.

"Especially with all the wind projects on the east side, the cross-Cascades capacity is beginning to be congested," said Michael Mikolaitis, director of transmission projects for Portland General Electric.