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Posted June 1, 2018

I did great on the exam. While this can't be entirely attributed to the books I use, they did play a part. I'll be selling most of the books I used, either on the classifieds here or on Ebay. Also you can PM me if you want to have first dibs on any of my books; I will be selling them cheap.

NFPA 70 – NEC – A required reference. 11-15 problems draw directly from this book. I brought the handbook version which I recommend, due to the amplifying information, graphics, and commentary. (I won't be selling this one).

NFPA 70E – Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace – A required reference. 1-3 problems draw directly from this book.

NESC – National Electrical Safety Code ANSI/IEEE C2 – A required reference. 1-3 problems draw directly from this book.

NCEES Practice Exam – you should bring it just in case. I did not refer to it during the exam. It is vital for studying as it is the ONLY way to get a feel for what exam questions really look like.

NCEES FE Supplied Reference Handbook – VERY useful. I have the 8th edition (2008 printing), I doubt there’s a significant change in content since then. If anything, it could be useful to have the current edition (free to print from NCEES) AND an older edition like this.

The Electrical Engineer’s Guide to Passing the Power PE Exam – Graffeo. Must I say more? The most highly recommended book on EB, and an absolutely vital resource. I can’t imagine prepping for or taking the PE without it. A must-have. Contains 1 full-length practice exam.

Power PE Exam Primer – Graffeo. Goes with the above book, contains 3 full-length practice exams. They are useful. I will say that they are in Graffeo’s style, which is a bit different from NCEES, and that there are enough typos and clerical errors that you can’t just score your answers by the key – but when you learn how to spot the errors, you learn how to solve the problem! Useful for study, not to bring into the exam.

Engineering Pro Guides Power PE – Technical study guide: how to pass the exam. By Justin Kauwale, PE. Unfortunately for me, I only learned of this a few days before the exam. I bought the PDF – a bargain at $35ish – printed and bound it, and brought it with me. It is actually just as good as Graffeo, I think! But I can’t swear to it – since I found the book late, and had already learned Graffeo, this book was somewhat redundant for me personally. But I HIGHLY recommend it! (I don't think it's fair to Justin, or maybe legal, for me to sell this one.)

EERM – Electrical Enginering Reference Manual – John Camara, PE. Highly recommended on EB. Useful for studying, has a lot of breadth, and works well in tandem with the practice problems below. I personally did not find it useful for the exam itself.

Electrical Engineering Practice Problems for the Power, Electrical and Electronics, and Computer PE Exams – John Camara, PE. – Used as a study focus aid. Did not bring to exam.

Electrical machines, drives, and power systems – Wildi. Immensely popular and highly recommended by EB users, I did not use it for study or bring to the exam. However it seems to be a great book. For me, it was redundant to some of my other references.

The Art and Science of Protective Relaying – C Russel Mason. I’m glad I read a lot of this before the exam. I don’t think I used it much during, but the concepts were very helpful. It is an older book, and the language is a bit dated, but it’s very much valid. The PDF is available free online, but the printed version is a) easier to study and b) can be brought to the exam.

Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers – Beaty, Fink – 16th edition. A heck of a book! Saw it recommended here on EB and bought it. It has a lot of depth in some interesting areas, and breadth over most areas. I brought it to the exam.

Power System Analysis – Grainger, Stevenson. Highly recommended on EB. Useful for both studying and during the exam. Very information-dense. A must-have.

Electric Machinery Fundamentals – Chapman. I was very lucky to have used this book in college, so I was already familiar with its layout and contents. I can’t recommend it enough – GREAT book. It’s the reason I didn’t read Wildi. Multiple questions on the exam cover topics that this book addresses explicitly. On one problem in particular, I was stumped until I saw the exact answer in this book – nearly verbatim. A must have – and I’m not selling this one!

Protective Relaying, Applications and Principles – Blackburn. Along with “Art and Science”, a good book on the subject. The PDF is free online. My copy was printed and bound from that.

Personally Curated Selection of Notes and Whitepapers – I spent a good bit of time finding whitepapers and notes on the internet that seemed relevant. I printed them and used them for studying and brought into the exam. I recommend doing this! But don’t get carried away with irrelevant detail. My printed notes are available for sale, or I can include them with other books as a package deal.

Mods, my intention with this thread is to recommend material, not to sell my wares. I'll be using the classifieds for that. But if I've crossed a line, let me know and I'll edit.

I just passed this past April too and I concur with JohnMdd's reference materials, though I brought a smaller subset to the exam:

NFPA 70 – NEC – Definitely a must-have.  Don't need to get the workbook version.

NFPA 70E – Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace – I didn't buy this (my material budget was getting stretched thin as it was) but I bought the NFPA 70E Ugly's book (2014 version, about $15 on Amazon) and it got me at least one question IIRC.

NESC – National Electrical Safety Code ANSI/IEEE C2 – Definitely a must-have.  Don't need to get the workbook version.

NCEES Practice Exam – Definitely a must-have for studying, I brought it but didn't use it.

The Electrical Engineer’s Guide to Passing the Power PE Exam – Graffeo. - I bought this based on all the high marks it got on EB, and used it frequently, but I was actually underwhelmed with the book.  The info in it is great, but the formatting was a distraction for me.

Engineering Pro Guides Power PE – Technical study guide: how to pass the exam. By Justin Kauwale, PE. - I see this as an updated version of Graffeo's guide.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.  This was my primary study guide (I also bought his Code practice exam and normal Practice exam, and along with the NCEES practice exam, was the majority of how I studied).  The info isn't necessarily better than Graffeo (and in some cases just different, so I can't recommend replacing the Graffeo guide completely with this), but the formatting is soooo much better and is just all around a great guide (assuming he keeps it updated for the future, there were some things like capacitors that the PE exam just added focus to that neither Graffeo nor this guide covered).  Also, his quick formula sheets at the back were invaluable.

Electrical machines, drives, and power systems – Wildi. - I think this saved me on like 1 problem.  Definitely a good reference, but it is redundant with Graffeo and Kauwale.

Power System Analysis – Grainger, Stevenson. - Personally, same as the Wildi book, though it may have been slightly more helpful than the Wildi book on the exam itself.

Personally Curated Selection of Notes and Whitepapers – I downloaded all of the whitepapers Kauwale has on his website as additional references, http://www.engproguides.com/powerreferences.html, then printed and bound them at Staples (pdf's were all free, the printing/binding cost was like $40).  Definitely a lot of material, and it saved me on a few questions.

June 19, 2016

Mark Paden, PE
Posted: April 2015
Updated: June 2018

http://paden.pe/peguide/

I passed the Electrical Power PE exam a few years ago. Before taking the test, I asked everyone I could what they did to prepare for the test. Since taking the exam, I’ve been asked the same questions. Below is a spruced up version of what I’ve told others. I took the exam in Alabama in 2012, so some of the following advice might be outdated or not relevant to your state.

You won’t find many study tips here.  This guide will focus on how to gather and organize your references to make the most out of the open-book nature of the 8-hour test. If I had to do it over again, I’d probably take an on-line course. Compiling resources took an inordinate amount of time. But, if you’re going at it alone, I hope this guide saves you some time.

I.   Carrying references to the exam

The PE exam is an open book exam. Some people only bring a few books – enough to be carried in a backpack. Others inexplicably use dollies or hand trucks to carry massive containers filled with books.  Most people use a roller-board suitcase to carry materials.

I used a roller board large enough to require a check-in at the airport. Even if your books can fit in a ‘carry-on’ bag, you’ll want enough room to be able to rifle around for quick access. I’ve seen advice for more elaborate methods (such as using milk crates as book shelves), but I think having the books strewn about is the most time effective method if you have fewer than 15 items.

How you choose to carry your materials is a relatively minor part of preparing for the test. Your selected references and how you familiarize yourself with them is of the most importance.

II.   Reference Book Reviews

Here are the books I took to the exam;

PPI Power Reference Manual

The PPI reference manual is the only book that even attempts to be all-encompassing, but I think it falls short in accomplishing it.

Everyone I know who has taken the PE exam within the past 5 or 10 years has purchased the PPI books. I know people who have passed the exam after relying primarily these materials, I just have no idea how they did it.

I lost faith in the book shortly after I started studying. I tried to use the Reference Manual to answer questions from the NCEES practice exam, but I kept running into problems that I couldn’t find a section for in the reference manual. The first third of the book seems to cover material outside the scope of the test (calculus, physics, etc.). Of the chapters that do cover test material, much of the text did not seem to be in-depth enough to answer the questions in the practice NCEES exam. I never went through the book chapter-by-chapter. But, given other people’s experience with the book, I have to assume all of the needed information is there.

After solving problems in the other two PPI books (The Sample Exam and Sample Questions), I went through and solved the examples in chapters relevant to the exam topics. The reference manual was helpful even if it wasn’t used as my primary study tool, but possibly not worth the price.

PPI Power Sample Exams

Two sample exams. The questions didn’t really have the same ‘feel’ as NCEES provided questions and might be a little too easy. But they do cover the right topics and they are generally helpful. The solutions are fairly detailed.

PPI Power Practice Problems

More questions, but not necessarily in a format you’d expect of the NCEES exam and some questions seem outside the exam’s scope. Like the sample exams, they’re helpful and worth going through.

NCEES Sample Exam – Power

Other than the NEC, this is the only ‘must have’ reference on the list. This will give you a good idea how much studying you’ll need to do. Obviously, of the other sample exams available, it’s the most like the real exam. Many of the solutions in the back of the book are vague, but detailed solutions for nearly every question can be found at engineerboards.com.

Complex Imaginary Sample Exams – [Complex Imaginary Website]

Though pricey, these books were helpful. Questions were thoughtful, similar to the NCEES questions (without being copies), and the solutions were thorough.

The videos posted to the Complex Imaginary website are helpful. Watching the root 3 videos as a refresher should be among the first things you do when you start studying. If you don’t want to buy the exams, at least print and work the examples they have posted on the website.
Of the various non-NCEES sample exams I tried, the Complex Imaginary books were the most helpful.

Spin-Up for the Electrical and Computer Engineering PE Exam (Power)

This book is in at least its second edition. I used the first edition, so some of these critiques might not be true anymore.

The book consists of five 80 question exams with answers in the back. Many questions were repetitive, especially between exams. The skeleton of the problem would be the same, only the numbers would be different. The Complex Imaginary exams were much better about making questions fundamentally different, yet still relevant, between exams.

The book had just been released when I purchased it. There were quite a few errors in the first edition, but the website was good about keeping an errata up to date. I assume it’s not as much of a problem in the second edition and beyond.

The solutions were not detailed. This is mostly because the questions were not difficult enough to warrant detailed explanations. But, if you do find yourself not understanding the problem, the solution is unlikely to help.

Like the Complex Imaginary practice tests, the Spinup exams are close to the NCEES type of problem. However, the Spinup problems are far easier and the Complex Imaginary problems are slightly harder.

Handbook of Electrical Power Calculations

Many sections cover topics not necessary for the exam, but a few chapters were very helpful. Since every chapter has a different author, results vary by topic. I found the best explanations for transformers, grounding and protective relaying in this book. The questions are helpful, but they are not the same style of question that you will find on the NCEES materials. The solutions are not detailed.

EC&M’s Electrical Calculations Handbook

It’s mostly a guide for the NEC style problems. There are better options out there. This book seems to have been printed on demand and the formatting is poorly done. Like a cheap paperback, you can’t open it to a page and lay it on a table without causing serious damage to the book’s spine. I do not recommended buying this one.

Schlaum’s outline of Electrical Power Systems

The structure of the questions won’t match what you’ll find on the exam. The solutions are not helpful. Because of these things, I didn’t extensively go through either of these books, but I did find a few good examples out of each. The index is helpful. But, that still doesn’t make it worth even the small cost.

Electrical Machines, Drives and Power Systems by Theodore Wildi

This is the best college textbook I’ve used, though I didn’t use it in college. I purchased it for the exam after seeing it recommended on engineeringboards.com.

Chapters I found particularly helpful (these aren’t chapter titles.. they’re the exam topics they cover);

• Chapter 8 – Delta Wye Basics
• Chapter 21 – Power Electronics
• Chapters 16, 25 – Power Transfer
• Chapter 27 – Power Factor Correction

The section on power transfer (Chapter 25) was particularly helpful. It’s an important topic that I couldn’t find explained as well anywhere else.

Chapter 8 is a good refresher on the differences between delta and wye systems. It should be one of the first things you review when starting out.

This is a college textbook, which means it’s expensive. BUT, there’s an international version that isn’t. I bought it for less than $20 using abebooks.com.

How is the ‘international version’ different from the US version? I’m not entirely sure. It’s in English. There are no weird, unexpected units. I have no idea how the international version is different, or why it’s 20 times cheaper than the US version. The only difference I could find is that the US version is a hardcover, while the international isn’t. Unless you want to pay well over $100 to make your reference suitcase slightly heavier on test day, I recommend buying the international version.

National Electric Code (NEC) Handbook – [Amazon Link]

It’s absolutely necessary to take either the Handbook or the regular codebook [Amazon Link]. If you’re taking the exam, you likely already have access to one of these. The difference between the two is that the Handbook is a hardback version with helpful annotations.

While the annotations might not be the type of information helpful for exam questions, I still recommend the Handbook over the codebook because the glossy pages are easier to read and self-annotate.

If the Handbook isn’t available to you, I wouldn’t bother paying for it just for use on this test.

Apply tabs liberally.

UGLY’S Electrical Reference – [Amazon Link]

I recommend this for any power engineer or electrician. It’s a pocket sized book containing all of the most used tables and formulas from the NEC. If tabbed correctly, you can use to look up cable sizes, breaker sizes, etc. slightly faster than the huge NEC Handbook. This is not a replacement for the Handbook by any means. But, if you familiarize yourself with the contents, it could shave some time off looking up information during the test, but I wouldn’t recommend purchasing it just for the test.

III.   Self-Made Reference Binders

You can bring self-prepared material as long as it is bound. I put together three 3-ring binders for the test. In two of the binders, I included a tab for each topic found in the NCEES provided outline and for topics covered within those listed topics. Each tab consists of at least one of the following;

• An index for the topic (more on that in a moment)
• Materials found on the internet (links to many of these at the bottom)
• Photocopied pages from other references
• Relevant examples from practice tests or other reference books – usually copied by hand.

All three notebooks.

Tabs I used with my notebooks;

NOTEBOOK 1

• Delta / Wye
• Per-Unit
• Symmetrical Components
• Power Electronics
  • RMS Graphs
  • RMS Formulas

• Thevenin Eq
• Voltage Regulation
• Phasors
• Transmission Lines
• Power Factor Correction
• Overcurrent Protection Devices
• IEEE/ANSI Device #s
• Power Flow
• Protective Relaying
• Wattmeters

NOTEBOOK 2

• NEC
  • Conductors
  • Motors
  • Voltage Drop
  • Enclosures

• Lighting
• Harmonics
• Economics
  •  Interest Tables
  • Compound Interest

• Insulation Resistance Testing
• Ground Resistance Testing
• Fundamentals of Power System Protection

The third notebook simply had practice exams and any other sample problem I could get my hands on.

I removed the spiral spines from my Complex Imaginary books and put them into my third notebook. I also included hand written problems and solutions from other references. It also included an index for each problem I solved while preparing for the test.

INDEXING

One thing I did that I doubt many others do when studying is that I created an index of every practice problem I worked. I kept up with it with an Excel spreadsheet. For each problem, I listed;

• What was being asked for
• Information given
• Where it can be found in my book references

Before the exam, I printed the index and put it in the front of my third notebook.

Notebook 3 – master index (I redacted the ‘source’ columns because I’m paranoid about what book publishers consider fair use. I won’t send you the .xlsx file for the same reason. I doubt it would be useful even if I did send it.)

I did this for every sample problem I worked and for every textbook example I came across. I then sorted alphabetically based on what the problem asked for, printed it, and put it in my notebook.

At exam time, I had 1,340 problems in my index. The plan was, if I came across a problem I didn’t know how to solve, I could easily refer to my index and find a similar problem. During the exam, the index strategy did not go as planned. I think the index helped me once, and I checked it in a futile effort for 3-4 more times.

Because of this, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this method since it eats so much time that could be spent actually studying. I estimate that my indexing efforts took somewhere between 10 and 15 hours total. However, I don’t regret doing it. The act of entering the information made me very aware of where everything was located. It was also a good way to keep up with how much progress I made during each study session.

It also lets you see how many cumulative problems you’ve worked and how they compare to the topics covered on the exam. For instance, “Wattmeters” is listed in the outline of topics covered on the test, but the practice tests I used had only one or two Wattmeter related questions. The index let me know that I needed to find more Wattmeter questions to be better prepared.

Pages 20 and 21 of my index.

From the massive index, I pulled entries to make separate indexes for the following topics;

• NEC
• Symetrical Components
• Voltage Drop
• Grounding
• Faults / SC Testing
• Voltage Regulation
• Flux

I printed these indexes and placed them in the appropriate tabs within my first two notebooks. Here’s what the first page of the NEC Index looks like. The other indexes are less than a page long.

Notebook 2 – first pages are of my NEC-specific index

When solving problems, try to write down every step, even the seemingly obvious ones. Use a different color pen to circle or annotate parts that you could envision yourself forgetting during the test.

Towards the end of my studying, I challenged myself to fill an entire 120 page spiral notebook with solved problems. I did this by reworking the Complex Imaginary exams, the NCEES practice exams and a few NEC questions I found on the internet.

The spiral notebook where I re-worked the practice tests. On this page, I work problems found here; http://www.pdhsite.com/courses/Motor%20Calculations%20Article%20430.pdf

My indexing habit took an obsessive turn when I numbered all of the pages within the spiral notebook and then indexed the problems within. This was too much. Don’t do this.

IV.   Internet Resources

The most helpful on-line resource I came across was EngineerBoards.com. It’s a message board with a primary focus of helping people prepare for the PE exam. Even though I didn’t participate in posting, it was still helpful. I didn’t post anything simply because most questions that I could pose to the board had already been asked and answered before.

Nearly every NCEES sample exam question has a few threads dedicated to explaining the problem’s solution. You can easily find sample example discussions by using a google search in the following manner;

Beyond engineerboards.com, standard Google searches are unlikely to lead you directly to what you’re looking for if you want a step-by-step description of how to solve a problem,.

The best way to find step-by-step instructions is to search university sites and PDFs.

You can do this by using this search format google;

This will often lead you to a class website for an EE class where lesson powerpoints are posted as well as step-by-step homework solutions.

Here’s a partial list of the internet references I used in my notebooks;

Internet Reference Links

Resistance Grounding System Basics

http://apps.geindustrial.com/publibrary/checkout/Resistance-Gro?TNR=White%20Papers|Resistance-Gro|generic

Understanding Ground Resistance Testing (take note of the quiz at the end)

 http://www.rainbirdservices.com/Training/Documents/Understanding%20Earth%20Ground%20Resistance%20by%20AEMC.pdf

GFCI

 http://www.homeinspector.org/resources/journals/GFCIs.pdf

Voltage Regulation

 http://esrdc.mit.edu/library/ESRDC_library/VR_parallel.pdf

Insulation Resistance Testing

 http://www.powercet.com/uploads/files/ae_understnd_insulation_res_testing.pdf

NEC – Conductor Sizing

 http://pdhsite.com/courses/Conductors%20course.pdf

NEC – Motor Calculations

 http://www.pdhsite.com/courses/Motor%20Calculations%20Article%20430.pdf

NEC – Voltage Drop

 http://fac-web.spsu.edu/ecet/wagner/4520-PPT09.pdf

NEMA Enclosure Types

 https://www.nema.org/Products/Documents/nema-enclosure-types.pdf

Harmonics

http://ecee.colorado.edu/copec/book/slides/Ch15slide.pdf

Symmetrical Components

https://www.eiseverywhere.com/file_uploads/a4f0ea9ba5ebe8baf31cba17ff378633_SymmetricalComponents_2013.pdf

This is covered at length in any Power textbook, but this pdf does a great job at covering the most pertinent information at a basic level.

The printout includes helpful examples covering 3-phase faults, single-line-to-ground faults and line-to-line faults.

IEEE/ANSI Device Numbers

http://www05.abb.com/global/scot/scot296.nsf/veritydisplay/c1256d32004634bac1256e19006fe88a/$file/1mrb520165-ben_en_ansi_numbers_ieee_standard_electric_power_system_device_function_numbers.pdf

Power Flow Analysis

 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.128.239&rep=rep1&type=pdf

More Power Flow Analysis

http://faculty.mu.edu.sa/download.php?fid=89894

Protective Relaying

 http://www.gedigitalenergy.com/multilin/notes/artsci/art01.pdf

Economics – print the economics section of the FE Exam Reference Handbook.

 http://ncees.org/exams/study-materials/download-fe-supplied-reference-handbook/

Economics – a slideshow on nominal and effective interest rates;

 http://ise.tamu.edu/inen303/Slides/Chapter4.pdf

Great problems with in-depth solutions from the guy who wrote the aforementioned textbook by Theodore Wildi;

http://www.wildi-theo.com/index.php?p=ListProblems

V.   Non-reference items to bring

Calculators – Bring two. Make sure they’re on the NCEES’s list of approved calculators. Use both to study with and make sure both are correctly configured (some calculators give answers as fractals out of the box.. you’ll want to make sure it’s set to decimals). Know how to switch between radians and degrees, polar and real, etc.

Wristwatch – I’m used to telling time with my phone, so I had to buy a cheap wristwatch to keep up with time during the test.

Bottled water – Pack a bottle in your roller-board.

Lunch (but leave it in your car) – You only get an hour for lunch so leaving the test site is too risky. Bring a simple lunch to eat as you quietly second-guess each of your morning answers.

That’s it!

Do these things and then hopefully you too can pass the exam and celebrate by purchasing an overpriced Peruvian domain name that you’ll immediately realize that you have very little use for.

Good luck!

Questions, comments and corrections can be sent to mark@paden.pe