# studying for the PE power exam (hard to tell if these books cover all published NCEES specs)



## alaska1986 (Feb 14, 2012)

Hello all. I am a fairly inexperienced engineer (although I somehow have enough to sit for the exam) working for the utility (line design section). Due to my inexperience and somewhat intimidation brought on by the PE exam. I am beginning to gather study material to familiarize myself with well in preparation for the April 2013 PE exam, I know I will need a lot of time to digest this information so I prefer overstudying.

I know this has been asked a thousand time but I want to make sure I have material that is actually useful to me that I can understand (hopefully not like a higher level grad school book) as someone who is preparing to study very early on and later will have a more structured schedule as the date approaches.

I want to make sure that I have books that at least cover all the Exam Specification areas that NCEES publishes (I'm not sure I've accomplished that with the list below)

From browsing this site, others and amazon reviews I have compiled the following list of study material:

Current NEC &amp; NESC editions

NCEES Power Sample Questions/Solutions

Power Reference Manual by Camara (I've heard transmission systems &amp; the NEC arent covered well in this book)

Power Sample Test Book by PPI

Power Practice Problems by PPI

Power System Analysis - John Grainer/Stevenson

Electrical Machines, Power System &amp; Drives by Wildi

IESNA Illumination Handbook

Handbook of Elec Power Calcs by H. Wayne Beaty (is this the best handbook)

Is this enough study material for someone with my little experience? Also is it possible for someone to give an emphasis of topics to study in the NEC book, I know its very important.

I've heard plenty of other material referenced such as:

Protective Relaying by Blackburn, Chelapati Electrical Power, Electric Machinery &amp; Power Systems by Chapman, Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering (Bobrow) and others on Variable Speed Drives.

My next question will be who has this material for sale  Thanks a million


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## Wildsoldier PE (Feb 14, 2012)

What you have pretty well get you to it....i recomend also a circuit analysis book like electrical circuits by nilsson i used the 8th edition...i think that book is the best on single phase ac circuit analysis power and 3-phase. Plus it gives you a lot of practice problems at the end of the chapters....the chapman book is good for transformers only (thats my opinion)...i recomend also that you take a review course by feb 2013....also buy complex imaginary books and the spin up exams....by doing all those problems you shouldnt have any problems on passing.


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## knight1fox3 (Feb 15, 2012)

Hello alaska1986 and welcome to EB.com. You didn't mention how many years you have been out of school. Also, when did you take the FE exam? The reason I ask is since you mentioned being inexperienced, you may also want to consider taking a review course to help reinforce fundamental concepts that you may have not been exposed to in some time. Probably the best way to start is to go through the NCEES sample exam and work all the problems. Try to find out where you stand in terms of your strengths and weaknesses. Then based on that, begin working on the areas you need improvement on. The references listed above is fairly solid line-up and pretty much the norm for recommendations by others. You may also want to consider additional NCEES formatted sample exam problems from Spin-up or Complex-Imaginary (there are other threads for both of these). I haven't used them myself but others generally give them positive comments albeit a few errors here and there.



alaska1986 said:


> My next question will be who has this material for sale  Thanks a million


I used a website called Addall when searching for references to buy at cheaper than new prices. In some cases you can even find "International" editions of the same text books for a fraction of the cost. Hope that helps and good luck in your studies. :thumbs:


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## alaska1986 (Feb 15, 2012)

Thanks guys.

WildSoldier- I used that Nilsson book in my undergraduate studies so I should be able to get a hold of that.

Knightfox- I graduated in December 2008. I passed the FE in Early 2008. When I mentioned being inexperienced I just meant in my career as an engineer solving these power type problems , not so much that I have a weak math or academic background. But I will take your advice.

Thanks again


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## Peele1 (Feb 15, 2012)

If you have Camera's PRM or EERM, you have about 75% of everything. I didn't have IESNA nor NESC when I took it. The PRM and other material I had covered what I needed.

Another good book that helped me a lot was Stallcup's Motors, Generators, etc. I had one from several years ago that I borrowed.

The test is the test, and is passable or not mostly irrelevant to one's experience...

I took a review course, then I took it again and we covered different material, so it wasn't a repeat.


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