April 2017 PE Power exam

[King]

Please can someone recommend me books for my April 2017 PE Power Exam?

 

[knight1fox3]

Please can someone recommend me books for my April 2017 PE Power Exam?

Wrong forum. Try here instead: http://engineerboards.com/index.php?/forum/108-power-exam-sub-forum/

Lots of good information and recommendations.

 

[Zach Stone P.E.]

Please can someone recommend me books for my April 2017 PE Power Exam?

Hi King!

I help run an online Electrical Power PE Exam review course that is currently free, the link is in my profile if you would like to learn more. 

We are planning on publishing an article in the near future with the recommended resources, but here is what I believe is the most important right off the top of my head.

Must Buys:

1. NCEES Electrical PE Sample Exam - This is the small paperback book published by NCEES that has a small quantity of sample questions. Will these exact questions show up on the exam? Of course not. However they do give a great idea of the level of complexity, difficulty, and wording that you can expect to see on the exam, straight from the horse's mouth so to speak. 

2. National Electric Code Handbook.  Instead of just the standard code book, go for the expanded handbook. It has commentary, better explanations, and in chapter examples of how to apply the code built right into the book itself.  It is worth the money and you will no doubt use it in your career. It greatly helps to clarify often times confusing wording in the NEC. 

3. Electrical Machines, Drives, and Power Systems - Theodore Wildi.  This is hands down my favorite resource. This is absolutely the best book for answering difficult qualitative theory questions that show up on the exam, and it is a fantastic book for supplemental problems especially in areas of rotating machinery, electromagnetic devices, and power system analysis. Not only that but it has a chapter on just about every topic that is on the exam.  Theodore Wildi (RIP) was born in 1922 and this book is basically his life's work, updated over decades. He wrote the book initially from his own first hand experiences when electromagnetic devices were a"new" technology (imagine that).  You can read about him here, be sure to translate the page to English at the top:  https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Théodore_Wildi

Strongly Recommended: 

1. The Electrical Engineer's Guide to Passing the Power PE Exam - Alexander S Graffeo. A good review book designed just for the PE Exam. Most of the examples and questions are very simple and the material might be a tad bit dated but still a great resource. 

2. Complex Imaginary Practice Exam Complete Set. This is chalk full of fantastic problems to practice solving. They tend to focus greater on specific topics and less on others, so feedback from students that only used it to study is that it gave them a false idea of what the distribution of questions from different topics would be like compared to the actual exam. However, the questions they do give are great and strikingly on par to the level of difficulty you can expect on the exam. 

3. A good review course.  There are many to choose from and they tend to be fairly expensive but if you can spring for it, or if your employer is willing to pay for it (most are) then take advantage. While not 100% necessary to pass the exam, the majority of examinees that take a review course pass the first time. 

It goes without saying that the more resources you can familiarize yourself with, and bring to the exam, the better. On average, test takers show up with anywhere from 10 to 15 books to give you a better idea (however there are the few that show up with just 2 or 3 books and do fine). 

Hope this helps, there are many other great resources to choose from that I did not cover here, these are just in my opinion the top ones.

 

[King]

Thank you so much for all the information.

God bless you.

King.