Complete exam guide
PE Electrical: Power
The most-taken of the three PE Electrical and Computer exams, and one of the fastest-growing PE exams there is. You sit Power start to finish: one 80-question exam across nine areas. Here's exactly what it covers, where the points are, and what the exam gives you to work with.
01
What this exam is — and who should take it
PE Electrical: Power is the licensure exam for engineers working in electrical power systems — and in practice, for a lot of engineers working near them. The candidates who sit it are rarely all power-systems specialists: they come from building electrical and MEP design, utilities and substations, industrial plants, renewables, rail and transit, controls, and often from a decade or more away from the last power course they took. That shapes how the exam feels. Its nine areas span from instrumentation to protection to codes, and most candidates find that their day-to-day work covers some of it deeply and other parts not at all. The preparation problem is usually breadth, not difficulty — and specifically the parts of the syllabus your job never asks you about. Every candidate sits the same 80-question exam.
Exam at a glance
- Questions
- 80
- Testing time
- Nine-hour appointment
- Format
- Computer-based (Pearson VUE)
- Reference
- Closed-book — references provided on-screen
- Units
- both SI and U.S. customary (USCS)
- Calculator
- NCEES-approved model
- First-time pass
- 58%
- Repeat-taker pass
- 41% — the gap is preparation, not ability
3,951 candidates sat it in 2024–25, up 21% year on year — one of the two fastest-growing PE exams. Exam details per NCEES.
02
What's on the exam
9 areas. NCEES gives each a question range, not a fixed count, and every form totals 80 (official area titles + ranges per the NCEES specification).
Electrical Safety
10–15 of 80Where points go
The code area, and the one candidates name as their biggest worry — especially those who don't work to the NEC daily. Wiring methods and installations, hazardous locations, special occupancies, and shock and burns. The difficulty here is rarely the concept; it's finding the provision fast under the exam's reference constraints.
Circuit Analysis
10–15 of 80Where points go
The foundation the rest of the exam leans on: three-phase and single-phase circuits, symmetrical components, the per-unit system, phasor diagrams, and DC. Per-unit and symmetrical components are the two that reward genuine fluency rather than a memorized procedure — they show up inside other areas' problems, not just their own.
Protection
10–15 of 80Where points go
Overcurrent protection, protective relaying, protective devices, and coordination. Candidates consistently report more protection questions than they expected — and it's an area where the reference handbook gives you comparatively little to lean on, so what you know going in matters more here than almost anywhere else.
General Applications
8–12 of 80Where points go
The broadest block: lightning and surge protection, illumination and lighting, energy management and demand calculations, and grounding. It reads like a grab-bag because it is one — which makes it easy to under-prepare, and it's worth as much as any single technical area.
Electric Power Devices
8–12 of 80Where points go
Transformers and capacitors alongside the exam's more modern content: electrical energy storage (battery, ultracapacitor), alternative power generation (photovoltaic and wind), and testing. Energy storage is one of the areas the October 2025 specification brought into focus.
Transmission and Distribution Analysis
8–12 of 80Where points go
The network end to end and at every voltage level — high, medium and low. Voltage drop, voltage regulation and support, power factor correction, power quality, fault current analysis, transformer connections, power flow, and system stability. Power factor correction and short-circuit work are where a large share of this exam's genuine calculation questions live.
Measurement and Instrumentation
6–9 of 80Where points go
Instrument transformers and metering, insulation testing, and ground resistance testing. A small, discrete, highly learnable block — which makes it some of the cheapest scoring on the exam if you cover it.
Power Electronic Circuits and Control Devices
5–8 of 80Where points go
Two distinct halves: power electronics — converters, inverter-based resources and variable-frequency drives — and the control side: relays, switches, Boolean and ladder logic. Small, but the inverter-based-resource content reflects where the grid has actually gone.
Rotating Machines
5–8 of 80Where points go
Machine types and applications, and motor starting. Small on paper — work the numbers here, not just the concepts: candidates often find the machine questions more mathematical than they expected.
Area titles and question ranges per the NCEES specification (eff. October 2025).
03
How to prepare for this exam
Don't study the areas evenly — weight your time to where the points and the difficulty are.
- 01
Budget four months and 200–400 hours. That's the range passers report, and the most common single recommendation is four months at 15–20 hours a week.
- 02
Build the circuit-analysis foundation first. Per-unit and symmetrical components turn up inside other areas' problems — fluency there pays off well beyond its own 10–15 questions.
- 03
Treat the codes as a navigation skill, not a knowledge one. The references are supplied on-screen one chapter at a time, which changes how you should practice. Working more problems doesn't fix slow lookups.
- 04
Prepare for conceptual questions, not just calculations. The most frequently reported surprise is how many questions ask you to reason about behavior rather than compute a value. If you can't say why each wrong option is wrong, you know the method but not the concept.
- 05
Don't skip the small areas. Measurement and instrumentation, and the control half of area 5, are cheap points that go under-prepared precisely because they're small.
- 06
Practice against the revisions that are scored — the exam uses specific editions, and a solution based on a different revision doesn't earn credit.
- 07
Measure with problems you haven't seen. Practice scores on material you've already worked measure memory rather than readiness, and it's the reason to reserve at least one full-length set you've never touched.
04
How CastorPrep covers the PE Electrical: Power exam
Exam-real problems, solved step by step.
Written to your exam's NCEES specification, area by area, and each one comes with a worked solution that shows the method, not just the number. Tagged to all 9 areas and 39 subtopics of the PE Electrical: Power exam, so practice follows the real weighting.
- A worked solution on every problem
- The Handbook section where the method has one
- All five of the exam's item formats, from fill-in to drag-and-drop
4,000 cfm of outdoor air at 95°F mixes with 12,000 cfm of return air at 75°F. Find the mixed-air dry-bulb temperature.
✓ Correct. The correct answer is B.
Worked solution
Weight by mass flow, not 50/50 — the outdoor air is a quarter of the stream:
06
Frequently asked
How is the PE Power exam structured?
80 questions in a 9-hour appointment that includes a tutorial and an optional scheduled break. It's computer-based, closed book with on-screen references, and uses both SI and U.S. customary units. Every candidate sits the same exam, start to finish.
What references do I get?
The NCEES PE Electrical and Computer: Power Reference Handbook plus six codes and standards, all as searchable on-screen PDFs available for the whole exam. Note the constraint: standards are supplied as individual chapters and only one chapter can be opened and searched at a time.
Which edition of the NEC is on the exam?
The 2020 edition, and this matters — NCEES scores solutions against the revision years listed in the specification, so a solution based on a newer code may not earn credit. Free public access to NFPA codes serves the current edition, which is a different book.
How often can I take it?
Power runs in quarterly testing windows. You may sit it once per window and no more than three times in any 12-month period; some state boards are more restrictive, so check yours.
What score do I need to pass?
NCEES uses a scaled cut score set per exam form and doesn't publish a passing percentage. Chasing a specific number on practice material is a mirage — what a practice score actually predicts is a more useful question.