Connecticut E-1 is the unlimited electrical contractor license. The trade exam that goes with it is a specific PSI paper: 100 questions, 4 hours, 70 percent to pass, open book. It is not the E-2 journeyperson exam, and it is not a generic “master electrician” test from another state. If you practice the wrong length, the wrong book list, or the wrong mix of subjects, you can know the work and still run out of clock.
This page is only that trade sitting. Counts, time, passing score, and the reference list below are from the current PSI Connecticut Occupational Trades candidate bulletin. License eligibility is from the Electrical Work Examining Board rule and the Department of Consumer Protection’s equivalent-experience chart. Confirm both before you apply. Editions and bulletins move.
What the E-1 license is
The holder of an E-1 may do all electrical work defined in Connecticut General Statutes section 20-330. That is the unlimited contractor credential. An E-2 may do that same scope of electrical work only while employed by a properly licensed contractor. The journeyperson does not become the contractor by staying on the tools longer. The state treats them as different licenses, and PSI treats them as different examinations.
Conn. Agencies Regs. § 20-332-2 says the requirement to qualify for the E-1 examination is two years as an unlimited licensed journeyperson, or at least six years of equivalent experience and training. The Department of Consumer Protection’s equivalent-experience chart puts numbers on that path: 8,000 hours of apprentice on-the-job training, plus two years (4,000 hours) of licensed on-the-job training, for 12,000 hours total, and 720 classroom hours. Classroom hours have to match the state’s required curriculum. Continuing-education certificates and manufacturer certificates do not substitute. On-the-job time does not erase the classroom requirement.
People get stuck here by mixing three different gates. Experience gets you permission to sit. The trade exam is the 100-question paper described on this page. Contractor applicants should also check the current PSI bulletin for a separate business-and-law exam. Do not assume these 100 trade items include law, and do not skip law because this outline is all code and trade. Read the bulletin you are actually registered for.
The trade sitting, in one block
- Examination: E-1 Unlimited Electrical Contractor, trade portion.
- Administrator: PSI, for the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection.
- Questions: 100.
- Passing score: 70 percent, which is 70 of 100.
- Time: 4 hours (240 minutes).
- Format: open book. You bring the references. The test center does not hand you a code book.
One hundred questions in 240 minutes is 2.4 minutes per item if you spend the time evenly. That is enough for an open-book lookup when the book is tabbed and you know which article you are opening. It is not enough to read a chapter, and it is not enough to discover at question 12 that you brought the wrong edition.
Books you may bring, and one you may not
Code questions are based only on the code edition named in the bulletin. A newer handbook on the truck does not control the answer key. For the National Electrical Code, the bulletin allows the NEC or the NEC Handbook, 2020 or 2023 edition.
Also allowed in the examination center:
- OSHA, 29 CFR Part 1926, with the latest amendments, or the PSI selections of Part 1926.
- Ugly’s Electrical References, 2020 or 2023. Match Ugly’s to the NEC edition you are using so the tables agree with the book you tab.
- NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm Code, 2013 edition.
- Photovoltaic Systems, 3rd edition, James Dunlap.
- Convert Your Home to Solar Energy, Everett M. Barber Jr. and Joseph R. Provey, 2010.
- National Electrical Safety Code, 2012 edition.
Not allowed: the NCCER Solar Photovoltaic Systems Installer Trainee Guide (2012). A study guide that feels helpful at the kitchen table can be confiscated at the door. If it is not on the allowed list, it does not go into the center.
You may highlight, underline, annotate, and index references before the session. You may not write in them during the exam. You may not write questions and answers into the books. Those notes have to be removed before you enter the testing room. Permanent tabs only. Temporary tabs, including Post-it notes, come off before the exam begins. Loose papers stuffed in the binding come out. A silent, non-printing, non-programmable calculator is allowed.
That rule set is the whole open-book strategy. Build the index at home. Do not plan to manufacture an index in the first half hour of the clock.
Where the 100 items go
PSI publishes the count by subject. Use the counts. A topic with 10 items is not “also covered.” It is a tenth of the score.
- Photovoltaics: 10
- Services, feeders, and branch circuits: 10
- Conductors and cables: 10
- Special occupancies and equipment: 9
- Raceways and boxes: 8
- Grounding and bonding: 7
- General electrical knowledge: 6
- Electrical power: 6
- Motors: 6
- Safety: 6
- Overcurrent protection: 6
- Fire detection and alarm systems: 5
- High voltage: 4
- Lighting: 3
- Low voltage: 2
- Illuminated signs: 2
Three subjects alone — photovoltaics, services, and conductors — are 30 of the 100. Add special occupancies, raceways, and grounding, and you are at 54 before you touch motors or overcurrent protection. A candidate who drills only the chapters they already install every week will feel busy and still miss the paper.
Photovoltaics is the clearest example. Ten items is the same weight as services. If your week is panels, services, and troubleshooting feeders, you still need the PV references on the allowed list, tabbed, not a trainee guide that is barred from the room. Fire alarm is five items, and the allowed fire-alarm book is NFPA 72, 2013, not “whatever edition the supply house sold last month.” High voltage is only four items, but the NESC 2012 is on the allowed list for a reason. Two items on illuminated signs is real points. It is not a section to skip because it looks small, and it is not a section to spend a week on while photovoltaics sits unopened.
How to tab before you study harder
Tab the books to the outline, not to your favorite jobs.
In the NEC, mark services and feeders, grounding and bonding, conductor ampacity and the tables you actually use, raceway fill, motors, and overcurrent protection. Mark Article 690 and the photovoltaic definitions and calculations you cannot do from memory. The bulletin gives special occupancies and equipment nine items and does not publish a finer split, so tab the special-occupancy articles you would otherwise guess: hazardous locations, health care, places of assembly, and the neighboring articles in that part of the code. Do not tab every article. A book with a tab on every page is a book with no tabs.
Give NFPA 72 its own tabs for the fire-alarm items. Do not hunt those answers inside the NEC and burn four minutes to land in the wrong book. OSHA 1926 gets tabs for the safety items: electrical safety on the job, fall and ladder rules that show up on trade papers, and lockout language if the PSI selections include it. Ugly’s is for the fast numerical lookup, not for learning theory on test day. If the table you need is buried, you will not find it in 2.4 minutes.
The solar books are for the photovoltaic slice that the NEC article does not fully carry. Know which fact lives in Dunlap and which fact lives in the NEC. Splitting ten PV items across two unfamiliar books, unread, is how an open-book exam becomes a closed-book exam.
A clock you can actually keep
Treat the four hours as three passes, not one heroic read.
Pass one is the questions you can answer from the tab in under a minute. Answer them. Do not re-derive a motor calculation you already know in order to feel careful. Pass two is the lookups. You already know which book and which tab. You are confirming a threshold, a table, or an exception, then marking the answer. Pass three is the few items that did not yield. Those are the only items allowed to run long, and only with time left.
If question 8 takes eight minutes, you did not “almost have it.” You spent the budget of three other items. Flag it and move. Open-book candidates fail this way more often than they fail from a missing fact: the fact was in the book, and the clock died while they searched.
Do the arithmetic once, at home, with a kitchen timer. One hundred items, 240 minutes. After 60 minutes you should be near item 40 if you are on pace, not item 15 with a stack of flags. Practice that pace on a full paper. Twenty-question drills teach the content and lie about the clock.
E-2 is a different paper
E-2 Unlimited Electrical Journeyperson is 80 questions, 70 percent to pass, 3.5 hours. It is open book as well. It is not a shorter E-1.
Set the outlines next to each other and the emphasis moves. On the E-1, photovoltaics is 10 items; on the E-2 it is 6. Services, feeders, and branch circuits are 10 on the E-1 and 7 on the E-2. Special occupancies and equipment are 9 versus 5. Electrical power is 6 versus 4. High voltage is 4 versus 2. General electrical knowledge actually runs the other way: 6 items on the E-1, 7 on the E-2. Safety is 6 versus 5. The journeyperson paper is not “the same test minus the hard ones.” The contractor paper spends more of its 100 items on PV, services, special occupancies, power, and high voltage.
Do not time E-1 practice to 3.5 hours, and do not walk into E-1 with only an E-2 bank. Eighty items in three and a half hours is a different rhythm from 100 items in four hours. Candidates who sit the contractor exam on journeyperson timing tend to finish feeling early and then discover the last twenty items were the ones the outline had weighted up.
How to practice this paper
Build the practice around the outline weights. If a quiz set ignores photovoltaics, it is not an E-1 set, no matter what the title says. If it is 115 items or a 73 percent law cut score, it is some other state’s business exam wearing a Connecticut label. The trade cut is 70 of 100.
Take at least one full sitting under the real rules: 100 items, a 4-hour timer, only the allowed books, permanent tabs already in place, no phone, no second monitor, no “I’ll just check this one formula.” Then grade it the same day. The point of the review is the miss plus the lookup you failed to make, not a second reading of chapters you already knew.
Sort the misses into three piles. Pile one: you did not know which book. Fix the tabs. Pile two: you knew the book and could not find the line. Fix the index, not your confidence. Pile three: you found the line and still chose the wrong exception. That one is the actual trade gap. Most open-book failures are pile one and pile two. People buy another practice bank when they needed a better tab.
When the full sitting is inside the four hours and the misses are pile three, you are studying the exam you will sit. Until then, more questions at random are a way to feel busy.
The week you schedule
You do not control the PSI appointment until DCP has cleared you to test. Once the date is set, stop adding books. The allowed list is the list. Spend the last days on timed lookups against the outline, not on a new code cycle.
The morning of the exam, the books you tabbed are the books you carry. A different NEC left on the passenger seat is not a backup. It is a different edition, and code items follow the edition on the bulletin. Check that Post-it notes are already gone, that no loose answer sheets are tucked in Ugly’s, and that the calculator is the silent non-programmable one you practiced with.
Pass the trade paper, and you still have whatever business examination and license fee the current DCP instructions require. This post does not replace those instructions. It is the map of the 100-question trade exam so you do not walk in trained for a different sitting.
Connecticut E-1 exam prep is built to this bulletin: 100 questions, 4 hours, 70 percent, open book, with the outline weights above. Confirm the live PSI Connecticut Occupational Trades bulletin before test day.