(Help!) Preparing for October Exam (Power) Any guidance greatly appreciated

Attempting to get organized for October (Power) Exam. Any advise/guidance on how to prepare for exam would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

See the thread "Did you pass the exam, how did you do it." Or something similar. It's in the electrical form.

I took the exam last week, so not sure if I passed or not yet. Here are the materials I brought to the exam:

• 2 Casio fx-115ES Calculators (the last thing you want to happen is have a calculator quit on you during the test and have to take the rest of the test without one. I was able to borrow the second one from a coworker that passed the test in October) I'm not sure of the capabilities of the other permissible calculators but this one will do Rectangular/Polar conversions which comes in very handy and saves time, plus I was familiar with the calculator from using it on the FE. Decide on the calculator you will use one the test when you start studying and only use that calculator for studying.
• NEC Handbook
• NESC
• Power Reference Manual for the Electrical and Computer PE Exam by John A. Camara
• Power Sample Exams for the Electrical and Computer PE Exam by John A. Camara
• The Electrical Engineer's Guide to Passing the Power PE Exam by Alexander S. Graffeo
• NCEES Electrical and Computer: Power Sample Questions and Solutions
• 3 ring binder with my own notes and additional references that I printed out
• 3 ring binder with example problems and a index that I created for the major problem types and which problem they were in the sample exams that I had with me. The idea was that this would allow me to reference sample problems during the test if I ran into similar problems and not have to page through all the sample problems to find that one I was thinking of.

For studying I did the following:

1. Spin Up Exam 1 (this test seemed really simple and didn't seem to follow the format of other sample tests, so I only did one. The other Spin Up exams may be better, but not sure because I didn't look at them) It was however helpful as a starting point since it was easier and got the ball rolling for me. Only problem is that their solutions are not very helpful for figuring out a problem you don't know how to do (at least for the edition I had.)
2. Complex Imaginary Exams 1-4
3. Power Sample Exams 1&2
4. NCEES Power Sample Questions
5. Example test in Electrical Engineer's Guide to Passing the Power PE Exam (I only did problems 1-40 of this since I got to this point the weekend before the test) if you do these problems be sure to check the errata that he sends with the book, because I had the first edition and there were a couple small errors.
6. Spin Up's Questions for the week on their website (did each one as they came out, which is 1 question per week. This just changed it up a little bit.)

I did the following while studying:

• Printed out references for questions that I didn't have references for as I was going through the problems and started creating my 3 ring binder
• made notes of equations and concepts that I thought would be useful/that came up a lot and broke them up into areas (Transformers, Motors, Power Systems, etc)
• made note of what category each problem fell into (ex. Parallel transformers, auto transformers, PF combinations, etc) This was later used to create my index of sample problems
• Added tabs to my reference material for commonly used sections (ex. NEC Cable Ampacity tables, Power Reference Manual PU equations, etc.)

Know your references otherwise they are worthless. Start studying, the soon the better. I started in January but missed a couple weeks of studying due to work travel and other items that came up and felt like I should have started in December, but that was hard to do with the holidays and such.

Hopefully this give you an idea of where to start.

crogers said:

Attempting to get organized for October (Power) Exam. Any advise/guidance on how to prepare for exam would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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okay, so i dnt know yet i passed the exam or not, but still i think i was kind of satisfied with the way i prepared, i mean i could have done better but still...

so first and foremost start with "Power Reference Manual for the Electrical and Computer PE Exam"

Start from chapter DC circuits, i believe its chapter 26 , go thru this book and each and every problem and also follow the "Power Practice Problems for the Electrical and Computer PE Exam" after each chapter, this will build up your strong base for studying.

Then side by side as u are doing the each chapter, try to find more material related lto the chapter, internet is very good source for problems. use book like wildi and grainger ( i didn't studied grainger at all but just use it for generator and motors)

give atleast one and half for this,,,,,,,, when u are satisfied , start sample papers, like spin up and complex and NCEES,

honestly this is what i did, and all notes i could get from internet. dnt leave anything, even if u dnt want to study please have some info from wiki , it will help u , like VFD i didnt do it but than i got notes from wiki, and i was able to do question related VFD just by going thru it.

rest will tell u more if i pass, ( lol if i knew i choose the right path )

good luck and please start studying earlier the better and more confidence, September u should be only doing sample paper and as many problems as u can esp theory problems.... dnt leave any sample paper it will add to your practice.

good luck and start soon ! u have build your base first.

cupojoe PE said:

See the thread "Did you pass the exam, how did you do it." Or something similar. It's in the electrical form.

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lusone:

A lot of existing threads with some good info in them.

crogers said:

Attempting to get organized for October (Power) Exam. Any advise/guidance on how to prepare for exam would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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and also how can i forget MY CHEAT FOLDER, THAt was the most important of all, please make your three ring binder and tab it, i did it for all the topic, like make tab for transformer and again divide it into parallel transformer ( very imp) and auto transformer and so on........ and when u do your sample paper , just follow your cheat sheet binder and try to get as much info as possible,,,

trust me this website is the only and great source to get the info related the PE so feel free

Once again, thanks for all of the information that each of you provided.

Part of it is mental, too. You have to be willing to give up most of your life for a few months. Prep will be your priority. Don't let it freak you out, just do it. Stay calm. Manage your mind.

Complex Imaginary offers a 4 volume P.E. electrical & computer POWER practice exams I found very useful. They also offer an electrical code drill book which familiarizes you with the organization of the NEC. Also I prefer the NEC Handbook for the test. Good Luck.

jimihdx said:

Complex Imaginary offers a 4 volume P.E. electrical & computer POWER practice exams I found very useful. They also offer an electrical code drill book which familiarizes you with the organization of the NEC. Also I prefer the NEC Handbook for the test. Good Luck.

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lusone: Wholeheartedly!!!!!

And as I have posted in other threads, get Tom Henry's Key Word Index for the NEC. You need to match up the type of NEC you have, the regular NEC or the Handbook. It will list topics out by page number as well as article number. I have been working with the NEC since I was in my teens. And I still have difficulty finding things in it. I went all through college with my degree focusing on power and never touched the NEC. It is all about limits and theory is what is taught in college. So for many engineers, finding stuff in the NEC only comes through repetition. And giving the wide scope of the NEC, you may not know where to find information on wet niche lighting for pools or protection for loudspeakers.

The book is cheap, usually less that $20. For the 2011 handbook edition I have, there are 56 pages, 8.5" by 11" with around 104 entries per page. If the problem you are tackling requires the NEC, I would grab the key word index first, find the section you need, then solve/answer the problem.

I'll throw my .02 here, to add to others. Here's how I prepared:

First thing I did was look up the exam specs and print out that page. Then I came on here and looked through all the (extensive!) info that's been posted about reference and study materials. Digested a lot of that and started making a list of what I wanted to buy.

Bought a bunch of references and sample exams around the beginning of January. From there, I started doing practice problems in the Spin-up exam book. The problems are easier than they are on the test but as many others say it builds confidence. After about one test's worth of those I was getting kind of bored with it so I started with the NCEES exam. These are much better practice problems but also more difficult. This sample exam will give you a good idea what kind of skills you will need on exam day. At this point I hadn't gotten very familiar with any of my books so I was mostly looking up reference info online, and printing anything I found to PDF for later, and trying to tab my books where it made sense (I mostly just tabbed chapters, which turned out to be fine for my purposes).

After struggling with the NCEES problems for a few weeks I took a break from doing practice problems. Through most of February and March I just kind of read through the Camara manual and my machinery book, which I like a lot. Definitely something I'll keep on the shelf in my office. I discovered I was quite weak in motors and so the time spent was well worth it to brush up on this stuff (heh, no pun intended).

Towards the end of March I started back into the practice problems although I really wish I had spent more time with this. I did the second Spin-up exam and worked through some more of the NCEES problems. As I worked the problems I went online and got more reference info for areas which weren't covered in my books (and some which had better or more understandable info). I started culling through my PDFs and printing things and making my binder, with copious tabs.

A week or two before the exam I felt I had my binder pretty well-made and knew my references pretty well, so I did a simulated exam on a Saturday where I sat for a whole day with the NCEES sample and no internet access and worked every question.

On test day, I followed the "grading" system laid out in Spin-up to rank problems as I went through. I feel this method saves you a LOT of time scratching your head and allows you to get all the slam-dunk questions out of the way early. I felt the AM portion was much tougher than PM, as I was only able to answer perhaps 10 questions in the first pass. Second pass is the code questions, I whizzed through that portion because, lucky me, I work with the NEC every day at work and know it quite well. I finished the AM with about 30 minutes to go, and left just a bit before they called the 15 minute warning where you have to sit and wait to the end.

The PM I did the same procedure, but found the questions much easier and was out of there in about 2 hours. I felt very confident heading home, but as the months went by my confidence was eroded. By the time results came out, I was a wreck. BUT, I should have stuck with the initial feeling; I came out with a passing grade.

Here's what I brought to the exam:

-My own binder with notes

-2011 NEC Codebook (not handbook)

-Camara reference manual

-Electric Machinery Fundamentals, by Chapman

-Spin-up by Lanza

-NCEES Sample Exam

-National Electrical Safety Code Handbook

-Handbook of Electric Power Calculations by Beaty

Binder was immensely helpful, I was in there for probably half the questions.

NEC was as helpful as you'd expect, and I didn't feel I was missing anything by not having a handbook, but YMMV. I do use a handbook now that we updated to 2014 and a lot of the explanations are good. I actually feel the straight codebook is easier to navigate, though. Make sure you get a set of pre-printed tabs for whichever one you bring. I like the color coded ones.

Camara was ok, I might have cracked it for 4-5 questions in each portion.

Chapman book was great. I kept that one out for a lot of questions.

Didn't use sample exams for anything on test day, that I can recall.

NESC - the handbook is not the actual code, it's actually just explanations of code sections. Not sure it would be more helpful to get the codebook, but I didn't use the handbook for much.

Beaty came in handy for a couple of questions which I couldn't find elsewhere.

I took the Electrical power exam and I have a few general recommendations:

Make sure you fully understand 3-phase systems and how to convert the voltages and current, since this applies to so many different question types on the power exam, including transformers, motors, generators, transmission lines, etc. Also, check the exam specifications for which subjects from the NEC are tested (they only test specific sections of the code) know what these sections are and have them marked ready for easy reference. Remember to study from several sources, the reference manual listed above doesn't cover subjects in enough depth for this exam. Also, try to think of it as a closed book exam, and don't rely on being able to look up answers from reference material for most of the questions or you will run out of time. Of course, do as many practice problems as you can.

Best of luck!

I am sure you will have a lot books, binders, print out formula book etc...one thing I can stressed enough...organization of your notes and study materials..

go to staples and buy something like this http://www.staples.com/Post-it-2-inch-Durable-Filing-Tabs-Assorted-Colors-24-Tabs-Pack/product_470972

cut it into half and you will have double the tabs..works great very durable

Tab the NEC book. Get the pre-printed tabs directly from the NEC site. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT.