Idaho Journeyman Electrician Exam Prep

About the Idaho Journeyman Electrician license

Idaho licenses electricians through the Idaho Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses (DOPL), which took over electrical licensing from the former Division of Building Safety. The Journeyman Electrician license is the qualified-installer credential: it authorizes you to install, alter, and repair electrical wiring and equipment, and apprentices generally must work under the supervision of a licensed journeyman. You earn it by meeting the experience-and-education requirement — documented on-the-job hours plus approved classroom instruction, or completion of an approved apprenticeship — and passing the trade exam.

The exam is National Electrical Code (NEC) based, because Idaho adopts the NEC as its electrical code. It is open book: you bring your own copy of the exam's NEC edition — the standard code book only, since handbooks, commentaries, and illustrated editions are not allowed. You may highlight, tab, and write notes in your reference book, but loose paper is not permitted in it. Idaho also allows a few named finding aids — Ferm's Fast Finder Index, Ugly's Electrical Reference, and Tom Henry's Key Word Index — so confirm the current approved-reference list before test day. Plan to tab and index your code book before test day, because the exam is as much a test of how fast you can locate a section as it is of what you have memorized.

Know these scope facts cold, because the exam asks them in plain-language form: the license is held by the individual, not the company; most installations require a permit and inspection before concealment (rough-in) and again at final; you must work within the classification you hold; and performing electrical work without the required license, or beyond your scope, is a violation that can cost you the license and carry civil penalties.

How Idaho licensing works

• Experience and schooling: IDAPA 24.39.10.100 gives two journeyman paths. Path (a) is a minimum of 8,000 hours as an apprentice making electrical installations, in line with the rules of the jurisdiction where the hours were worked, and a four-year sequence of instruction approved by the Idaho Division of Career-Technical Education. Path (b) is 16,000 hours of electrical experience. The rule does not print a 576-hour classroom total. Do not study that older figure.
• When you may sit: the examination subsection says you may sit after proof of the approved four-year sequence, or after 16,000 hours. Appliance repair, motor winding, and communications do not count. No more than 2,000 hours as a limited electrical installer or trainee count toward journeyman experience.
• Application: submit the application, fee, and notarized proof of experience to DOPL; once you receive an approval letter you may schedule and pay for the exam.
• Exam vendor and format: testing is administered through PSI (Idaho recently moved the exam from DOPL's in-house regional offices to PSI). PSI bulletin 12220, effective 9 July 2026, sets this paper at 100 questions, 70 percent, and 270 minutes. That is four and one-half hours, not four. The exam is open book. An older four-hour note is not this page.
• Fees: the PSI examination fee on the bulletin is $75. That is not the license fee and not the permit fee. Confirm the license term, the application fee, and any continuing-education hours on the current DOPL schedule. This guide does not print a license price it has not taken from that schedule.

Before you rely on any value in this guide, confirm the exact NEC edition the exam is written to on the current DOPL page and the PSI candidate bulletin. IDAPA 24.39.10.600 adopts the 2023 NEC as the Idaho Electrical Code and then amends specific sections for field installations. The PSI journeyman book list is different: you may carry the 2020 NEC or the 2023 NEC, plus Ugly's Electrical References, 2023. Code-based exam items follow those editions. A 2017 book is not on this bulletin. An Idaho amendment that is not printed in the book you carried is a field rule, not an exam reference. Ampacities, GFCI/AFCI scope, working-clearance distances, and receptacle-spacing rules all change between editions, and the exam is written to a specific edition — not necessarily the newest one published.