MEO and Five Lakes Energy have developed a powerful resource planning tool called STEER-UP, which provides data-driven insights to help guide energy planning for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. While originally designed to analyze strategies for implementing the Clean Power Plan, the STEER-UP tool remains highly relevant for energy planning in the region.
Supported by funding from the State of Michigan Energy Office, the STEER-UP tool is an open-access model that calculates the least-cost clean energy plan based on policy options, load forecasts, and price forecasts. It utilizes publicly available data for existing electric generating units in the Upper Peninsula, and provides a balance of ease-of-use and analytical rigor that can be customized to meet specific needs.
Using high-resolution data such as generator-level data and hourly data for renewable resources, the STEER-UP model identifies specific projects for investment and renewable resource installations to build for least-cost carbon mitigation. By facilitating access to data and informing broad conversations about important public policy, energy planning, and economic development issues, the results of STEER-UP can help guide decisions for the region and beyond.
As MEO and Five Lakes Energy continue to refine the tool and update data sets, we welcome feedback on its usefulness and functionality. While fluency with Excel is necessary to work with the model, users with a range of power systems expertise can create and test scenarios. It is important to note that this is a large Excel file and may take several minutes to download.
