more electricity than if we simply turned off the STUPID for long enough to build a few more (well probably a lot more) power plants closer to where the demand is than, say, Oregon is.

OK, maybe, but you’re not going to be able to put a power plant close enough to each one of these served communities to make a difference. Yes, you might make it safer “running through the forest” but you’re going to make it unsafer having a nuke or gas or oil or coal plant down the street from Mr. & Mrs. Average American’s home. I mean we’re talking about several hundred communities being served by a relative handful of power sources, at least at present.

More to the point, most power loss doesn’t come from “the transmission”, that’s at most 5%. You lose another 10% stepping the voltage up and then back down, which you have to do even if you’re only going a few tens of miles, and up to another 5% in “local distribution”, running the lines at lower voltages in neighborhoods and splitting again with the transformers on the poles. (“Reconductoring” doesn’t change that 5% transmission loss, it allows you to push twice as much juice through without having to build more towers, EPA hearings, NIMBY objections, etc. That’s worth a lot.)

I’m not saying “nothing can be done”, just that it’s a more complex problem (assuming you want to have some reliability in the grid) than most people think.