By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Cutting photocopier costs was once Randall Swisher's top concern, now it's redrawing the United States' power grid into a $60 billion superhighway.

When Swisher became executive director of the industry group the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) in 1989, he had four employees and fuel was cheap. So the energy business largely ignored him. Ten years ago, cutting office costs topped the agenda.

Now, with all-time high fossil fuel prices and rising worries about global warming, AWEA boasts 68 employees. Space constraints are forcing Swisher to move AWEA's office this August for the second time in three years. And AWEA has ensconced itself in the energy establishment, plotting a future with some of the biggest players that keep the lights on in the world's biggest energy consumer.

Swisher commissioned American Electric Power (AEP.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the country's largest electricity transmitter and one of its largest power generators, to map how a new national network of power lines could potentially distribute wind power from the blustery "wind corridor" from Texas to North Dakota to the heavily-populated coasts.

The "AEP Transmission Vision," map looks as if the United States has a case of green varicose veins that mass in the central corridor and stretch to the coasts. The veins represent AEP's proposal of 19,000 miles (30,570 km) of 765-kilovolt power lines, which are far bigger than most lines used today.

"It would be a tremendous step forward to provide a more reliable, robust system to serve the entire electric industry, not just wind," said Swisher, who added that the bigger lines would face fewer complaints from environmentalists than a maze of smaller lines, because they'd need less ground space.

Melissa McHenry, an AEP spokeswoman, said the lines would be a "very highly efficient kind of superhighway" that would help fix the aged U.S. grid and prevent massive blackouts, like the 2003 outage that hit over 40 million people in eight states in the Northeast.

It could also provide a backbone for renewable power, such as wind from the heartland and solar from the Southwest, which need a solid network because their power generation fluctuates steeply when the wind stops or the clouds block the sun.