Dr. Michael Ropp received the Bachelor's degree in Music from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1991, and the Masters and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1996 and 1998, respectively, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. In 2005, Dr. Ropp founded Northern Plains Power Technologies (NPPT), a power systems engineering consulting and services company in Brookings, SD. NPPT specialized in the analysis, design, control, protection, and diagnosis of low-inertia power systems; inverter-dominated power systems; and distributed power systems. Dr. Ropp is presently a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM.
Dr. Ropp has twenty-three years of experience in power engineering, power electronics, and photovoltaics. His experience encompasses computer modeling of power systems; grid integration of distributed energy resources (DERs); design, modeling, fabrication and testing of power electronic converters (DC-DC and DC-AC); modeling, control, and monitoring of energy storage systems; and low-inertia and distributed power system design/planning, control, protection, diagnosis/characterization, and seamless grid integration. He has experience in essentially every aspect of photovoltaic systems, including PV devices, energy storage, power electronics and their controls for both on- and off-grid systems, integration of PV into microgrids and other low-inertia power systems, and PV system modeling, design, specification, procurement, monitoring, and standards compliance. He has extensive experience with power system modeling, in particular with inverter-based plants and with low-inertia power systems (microgrids, island and remote communities, etc.), in MATLAB, PSCAD, EMTP-RV, and PSS/E. He has authored over seventy technical publications, including an IEEE Technical Prize Paper. He presently holds eight patents. Dr. Ropp is a Fellow in the IEEE and is active in the development of standards, including IEEE-1547, and is a registered Professional Engineer in South Dakota and Hawaii."