PE Electrical & Computer — Power Practice Questions

How to pass the PE Electrical: Power exam on the first try

1. Cover all nine knowledge areas of the PE Electrical Power exam, including the ones your job never touches. Machine equivalent circuits and symmetrical components are years out of practice for most working power engineers.
2. Practise inside the on-screen references. On the PE Power exam NCEES supplies the reference handbook, the NEC, the NESC, NFPA 70E and the NFPA hazardous-location standards as searchable PDFs, and nothing printed comes in with you.
3. Per-unit bases belong in writing on every fault and transformer question. On the PE Power exam a base left on the equipment rating instead of the system rating produces a wrong answer that is sitting in the options.
4. Six minutes per question is the whole budget, with 80 questions in 8 hours of PE Power exam time, delivered in two sections with a 50-minute break. Nothing is deducted for a wrong answer, so never leave one blank.
5. Work each miss back to the reason that wrong option was built. PE Power distractors are computed from an expected slip: a √3 applied twice between line and phase, an NEC ampacity read from the wrong temperature column.

About the PE Electrical: Power exam

The PE Electrical and Computer: Power exam is the NCEES licensing exam for engineers who design, analyze, operate, and protect electrical power systems: utility transmission and distribution, industrial and commercial facilities, generation, and the machines and devices in between. It is the second and final exam on the path to a Professional Engineer license, taken after the FE exam and, in most states, after four years of progressive engineering experience. The exam is computer-based and offered year-round at Pearson VUE test centers.

The exam has 80 questions across nine knowledge areas. Under the specification effective October 2025, Electrical Safety, Circuit Analysis, and Protection carry 10 to 15 questions each, General Applications, Electric Power Devices, and Transmission and Distribution Analysis carry 8 to 12 each, and Measurement and Instrumentation, Power Electronic Circuits and Control Devices, and Rotating Machines carry 5 to 9 apiece. Questions are practice-oriented (per-unit fault calculations, transformer and motor sizing, voltage drop and power-factor correction, relay coordination, and code-driven safety questions from the NEC, NESC, and NFPA 70E), and the codes themselves are on screen during the exam. The practice bank on this page is organized by the same nine areas, and many questions carry one-line diagrams and figures because the real exam does.

What each PE Electrical Power knowledge area covers

Source: NCEES PE Electrical and Computer: Power exam specifications (effective October 2025)

Question ranges are from the NCEES specification effective October 2025. Each exam form draws a fixed number from each range that sums to 80. The same PDF lists the codes supplied on screen: NFPA 70 (NEC) 2020, NFPA 70E 2021, ANSI C2 (NESC) 2017, NFPA 30B 2023, and NFPA 497 and 499, both 2021.

How the PE Electrical: Power exam is scored

The PE Power exam is reported as pass or fail. NCEES does not publish a passing percentage. Your raw score is converted to a scaled score and compared with a standard set by a panel of licensed power engineers, so the number of correct answers needed can differ slightly between forms. Results are released through MyNCEES, typically within 7 to 10 days, and sent to the state board you registered under. Failing results include a diagnostic report of your relative performance by knowledge area.

Questions are predominantly four-option multiple choice, with alternative item types (multiple-correct, point-and-click on a one-line diagram, drag-and-drop, and numeric fill-in-the-blank) across the areas. There is no penalty for wrong answers. At 80 questions in 8 hours you have an average of 6 minutes per question.

Registration and exam rules

Administered by

NCEES, at Pearson VUE test centers. The exam is computer-based and available year-round. Register through MyNCEES. Some state boards require their own approval before you schedule.

Eligibility

Set by your state licensing board. The typical requirement is a passed FE exam plus four years of progressive engineering experience under a licensed engineer, with an engineering degree from an EAC/ABET-accredited program. Several states now let you sit the PE before completing the experience requirement. Licensure still waits for it.

Appointment

9 hours in total: a 2-minute nondisclosure agreement, an 8-minute tutorial, 8 hours of exam time, and a scheduled 50-minute break. The exam is delivered in two sections with the break between them. Once you start the second section you cannot return to the first.

References

NCEES supplies the PE Electrical and Computer Reference Handbook on screen as a searchable PDF, together with the codes and standards named in the Power specification (the NEC, the NESC, NFPA 70E, and the NFPA 30B, 497, and 499 hazardous-location standards), in the editions the specification names and also as searchable PDFs. No printed codes or notes come in with you. Download the free handbook from ncees.org, and practise navigating the NEC tables in the on-screen format and not in a tabbed paper copy.

Calculator

Only models on the NCEES-approved list: the Casio fx-115 and fx-991 families, the HP 33s and 35s, and the TI-30X and TI-36X families. Complex-number and polar arithmetic are used constantly on this exam, so learn your model's complex mode thoroughly.

Retakes

You may take the PE once per testing window (January–March, April–June, July–September, October–December) and no more than three times in any 12-month period.

The 16-week PE Electrical Power study plan

NCEES does not publish a recommended study time. Many candidates plan for 200 to 300 hours, and unlike the FE, much of that time goes to relearning fundamentals that daily practice does not exercise. The plan below fits that into 16 weeks at 12 to 18 hours a week. It starts with the analytical core that every other area depends on.

1. Weeks 1–3Circuit Analysis. Three-phase relations (wye and delta, line and phase quantities), complex power and power factor, per-unit conversion across transformer zones, and symmetrical components for unbalanced faults. Take a timed diagnostic first so you know which of these has faded.
2. Weeks 4–6Rotating Machines and Electric Power Devices. Transformer equivalent circuits, impedance, connections, and testing; synchronous and induction machine equivalent circuits, torque-speed behavior, slip, efficiency, and starting methods; DC machines; capacitors, energy storage such as batteries and ultracapacitors, and photovoltaic and wind sources. This section is calculation-heavy and rewards repetition.
3. Weeks 7–9Transmission and Distribution Analysis. Line models, voltage drop and regulation, power-factor correction sizing, power flow basics, three-phase and single-line-to-ground fault calculations, and distribution design. Combine with per-unit practice from weeks 1–3.
4. Weeks 10–11Protection. Relay types and settings, time-current curves and device coordination, and fuse, breaker, and recloser selection. Work coordination questions with the curves in front of you.
5. Weeks 12–13Electrical Safety (wiring methods and installations, hazardous locations, special occupancies, and shock and burns, all driven by the NEC and NFPA 70E), Measurement and Instrumentation (instrument transformers, metering, insulation and ground resistance testing), and General Applications (lightning and surge protection, lighting, energy management and demand, grounding). Practise in the on-screen PDFs so you know where each table sits in the NEC and the handbook.
6. Week 14Power Electronic Circuits and Control Devices. Converters, inverter-based resources, and variable frequency drives, then the relays, switches, and Boolean and ladder logic that control them. Energy storage sits under Electric Power Devices and belongs in Weeks 4 to 6.
7. Weeks 15–16Two full-length timed mock exams (80 questions in 8 hours with one break) a week apart with the handbook and the codes open and an approved calculator. Review every wrong answer by knowledge area and spend the final days on the two or three areas that still lag.

Where PE Electrical: Power candidates lose points

• Relying on work experience instead of practice. Most power engineers use a narrow slice of the specification day to day. The exam asks about all nine areas, and machine equivalent circuits or symmetrical components can be years out of practice.
• Weak per-unit discipline. Many wrong answers on fault and transformer questions come from a base mismatch across a transformer zone and rarely from a conceptual error. Write the bases down every time.
• Losing a √3. Line and phase quantities, single-phase and three-phase power, per-phase versus total impedance, and line-to-line versus line-to-neutral voltage drop are where the factor goes missing or gets applied twice, and both results are among the options.
• Meeting the on-screen references for the first time on exam day. The handbook and the codes are supplied as PDFs. If you cannot find a transformer connection diagram or an NEC ampacity table in about 20 seconds, that time compounds across 80 questions.
• Skipping Electrical Safety, Measurement and Instrumentation, and General Applications. Together they are 24 to 36 of the 80 questions, their questions are often shorter and more direct than machine or fault questions, and they carry the same weight.
• Leaving questions blank. There is no guessing penalty, and with 6 minutes per question a flagged best guess is always better than an empty answer.

Learn the PE Electrical: Power the way its item writers think

Every Power distractor is derived from a specific slip. Starting from the correct answer, the item writer computes what you get with a per-unit impedance left on the equipment base instead of the system base, with the √3 applied twice or not at all between line and phase quantities, with an NEC ampacity read from the wrong temperature column, with the sign of reactive power reversed, or by stopping at the fault current when the question asked for the interrupting rating. PassExams explains, on every question and every tier, why the option you chose looked right. On Pro, each wrong option is also labelled with its trap type (reading trick, unit conversion, sign error, formula swap, partial solution), so a miss tells you which step went wrong.

Those labels turn into a map of your weaknesses by area. Discovering that Transmission and Distribution Analysis costs you mostly per-unit base slips while Electrical Safety costs you reading tricks in the NEC tables is far more useful than a percentage. When you miss a question, the variant engine regenerates it with a new transformer rating or a new fault location, so the retry tests the method, and hints eliminate the most tempting distractor first. The exam-day numbers will be new. The reasoning is what transfers, and that is what learning to pass means.

PE Electrical: Power exam FAQ

Further reading

• FE exam vs PE exam: how the two differ
• FE Electrical and Computer practice, if you still need the FE
• How to pass the FE Electrical and Computer exam
• Plans and pricing for PE Electrical Power practice