Power PE Technical Study Guide by Justin Kauwale

[fyrfytr310]

Has anyone used this resource before?  Thoughts?  A quick (lazy) search didn't yield much about this specifically.

http://www.engproguides.com/powerguide.html

 

[daydreambeliever]

Yes. It's good. An easy read so you'll have to dig much deeper than the guide goes. There were sections I found much more useful than others. For instance Protection is the highest stakes topic on the exam right now. You'll need to find several other references if you are not taking a review class. The cheat sheets are helpful and the practice exam is one I would definitely recommend.

 

[a4u2fear]

It's exam and problems are much better than Graffeo and Complex in my opinion

 

[DLD PE]

I bought the practice exam.  For $40 you can't beat it and I agree with a4u2fear, it's better than Graffeo and Complex.  There are free "cheat sheet" documents you can download from the sight (mostly equations and diagrams from each topic) that are very useful.  I used them a lot in the exam along with my other equation cheat sheets I wrote myself or got from class notes.

 

[sayed]

very good

best part is the author is available for questions

 

[Surf and Snow]

I used it as well as his practice exam. I found both to be very useful. I took and passed the exam in April 2018 (one and done) and IMHO this was my 2nd best reference. I, personally,  thought Graffeo was a little more helpful, but these are excellent. The biggest thing holding the technical reference guide back is that it did not have an index. On a timed exam, with 6-minute average problem time, every second counts. It sucks when you KNOW the problem can be solved by info in this book, but with no index it takes you 2 minutes to find it instead of 10 seconds. Graffeo has a quick to use index. I really wish Justin would create an index. It would help push this from an 8 or 9 to a solid 10. That said, I would still HIGHLY RECOMMEND it. The price to value ratio is off the charts. There is no better reference for even close to the price of this. It trumped most other references I paid $100+ for in terms of applicability. Buy it, and his practice exams. You wont regret it. As a side note, I printed it at work and brought the paper to Office Depot and had it nicely spiral bound and covered for only $3!

 

[wvengineer]

I used it as well as his practice exam. I found both to be very useful. I took and passed the exam in April 2018 (one and done) and IMHO this was my 2nd best reference. I, personally,  thought Graffeo was a little more helpful, but these are excellent. The biggest thing holding the technical reference guide back is that it did not have an index. On a timed exam, with 6-minute average problem time, every second counts. It sucks when you KNOW the problem can be solved by info in this book, but with no index it takes you 2 minutes to find it instead of 10 seconds. Graffeo has a quick to use index. I really wish Justin would create an index. It would help push this from an 8 or 9 to a solid 10. That said, I would still HIGHLY RECOMMEND it. The price to value ratio is off the charts. There is no better reference for even close to the price of this. It trumped most other references I paid $100+ for in terms of applicability. Buy it, and his practice exams. You wont regret it. As a side note, I printed it at work and brought the paper to Office Depot and had it nicely spiral bound and covered for only $3!

I'm the same as above.  I took and passed in April.  I didn't decide to take the PE till January of this year.  I wanted to see how cheaply I could prepare for the exam, which was kind of stupid considering my company paid for everything.  Because of work I already had most of the relevant code books.  I immediately found this site which is where I saw recommendations for the Graffeo book.  It seemed like a decent value.  I read through it first and did the problems in the back of the book.  I bought the NCEES test which I saved for mock exams close to test time.  I found engproguides via google and bought the guide and exam.  I printed out at work and put it in a binder.  For the price I figured why not.  Anyways I created my own table of contents for the engpro study guide.  It's a word doc that I can email to whoever might want it.  My TOC is nothing phenomenal, but it helped me and another guy here at work who also took the exam.  I created a binder tab at the beginning of each section of the guide.  My TOC gets you to the right section and then the TOC at the beginning of each section of the guide gets you to the correct page.  Graffeo and the engpro guide were my main two references not including the NEC.  I had plenty of others but I used them the most.  I also bought the cheapest copies I could find of Blackburn, Wildi, and Grainger.  As a side note I found doing a couple mock exams a month and a week prior to the actual exam were very useful for training the brain.  I think mental stamina is what makes the afternoon part seem harder for most people.  .       

 

[justin-hawaii]

Thanks everyone for the review comments.  I added an index and corrected some errors I found, for the October 2018 exam.   I would love any suggestions on where I should go into more detail for the April 2019 exam.  I already received requests to include Reliability Engineering & Measurement topics and more detail on motors and VFDs.  

 

[tpkjr2006]

Justin,

I took the exam in oct 2018. I really enjoyed your study guide. I am 99% sure i failed can develop more practice problems around theory and protection?

 

[Phenomenon083]

can develop more practice problems around theory and protection?

It looks like Protection problems are one of the reason pass rate on power PE dramatically fall since April 2018.

 

[tpkjr2006]

I can agree with that. I am a protection and controls engineer ( for the last 2 years specializing in wiring not settings) and a buildings engineer for 6 years prior to that. I struggled with the wording.