About the Virginia Master Electrician license
Virginia licenses electricians through the Virginia Board for Contractors (DPOR). The Master Electrician is the senior credential. Virginia's Board for Contractors qualifies you for the Master exam through either one year holding a valid journeyman license in the electrical trade or nine years of practical experience (18VAC50-30-39 D). Section 30 is general requirements. It is not this experience table. There is no residential electrician path, and the Master exam adds heavier load-calculation, design, and code-application content on top of the journeyman-level material. A holder at this level can typically pull permits, supervise journeymen and apprentices, design installations, and serve as the qualifying individual for a licensed contracting business.
The exam is National Electrical Code (NEC) based, because Virginia adopts the NEC as its electrical code. It is normally open book: you may bring a clean, bound copy of NEC 2020 (the listed edition) plus NFPA 70E 2024 as allowed. Tabs and highlighting are usually permitted; loose or handwritten notes usually are not — confirm the current rule with the vendor. 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 Virginia licensing works
- Experience: documented hours in the trade (apprentice and journeyman time), with the senior license requiring journeyman time on top of the base requirement.
- Education: approved instruction hours or completion of an approved apprenticeship program count toward the journeyman experience that underlies the master credential.
- Application: submit the application, fees, and proof of experience (often signed off by a supervising/master electrician or employer) to the board before you are approved to sit.
- Exam vendor: PSI. The Master Electrician exam on the 7/23/2026 PSI CIB is one 90-item portion, 270 minutes, passing score 63. Board rules are 10 of those 90. There is no leftover 80+10 statutory split and no skip-statutory-if-you-passed-journeyman path on this paper. Sit all 90. Confirm the current item counts, timing, and fee on the PSI candidate information bulletin, since these can change.
- Renewal: Virginia tradesman licenses, including Master Electrician, run on a three-year cycle. As a condition of renewal you must complete 3 hours of board-approved continuing education covering applicable building-code changes (18VAC50-30-120) — this is a standing per-cycle requirement, not something triggered only when a new NEC edition is adopted.
The PSI bulletin lists NEC 2020 as the examination book, with NFPA 70E 2024. As of this writing, Virginia's Uniform Statewide Building Code enforces the 2020 NEC (adopted via the 2021 edition of the USBC, effective January 18, 2024 and mandatory for permits since January 18, 2025). Check the live bulletin before you buy a book, because the listed edition can change. Ampacities, GFCI/AFCI scope, working-clearance distances, and receptacle-spacing rules all change between editions, and the exam is written to the edition Virginia has adopted — not necessarily the newest one published.
This is the opening of the full study guide. The complete guide continues into code navigation, worked calculations and solved exam questions.
