What is actually on the PV Associate exam.

NABCEP publishes the job task analysis for this credential, which means nobody has to guess what is on the examination. What NABCEP does not publish is a pass rate, and no provider that tells you one is quoting an official figure.

The mechanics

• Seventy multiple-choice questions, four options each.
• Up to two hours.
• A scaled score of 65 to pass. A scaled score is not a percentage, so do not treat it as "65% correct" — it is a conversion that accounts for the difficulty of the particular question set.
• English only, computerised, proctored.

The six domains

In the order a system actually gets built, which is also the order worth studying them in.

1. Safety. The hazards specific to PV rather than to construction generally. The one that catches experienced trades is that a PV array is a source you cannot switch off at the sun: it is live whenever there is light on it, and DC arc behaviour is not AC arc behaviour.
2. Core knowledge. How a cell becomes a module becomes an array; what irradiance is and why it is not the same as sunshine hours; the vocabulary the rest of the exam assumes you have.
3. Sales and economics. Why a system is sized against consumption rather than roof area, what a payback calculation actually contains, and the site-survey information a quote depends on.
4. Design. The heaviest domain for most candidates and the one with the arithmetic. IV and power curves, temperature coefficients, string sizing within inverter voltage windows, conductor sizing and ampacity, charge controllers and batteries where they apply.
5. Installation. Mechanical attachment and weatherproofing, electrical termination, labelling, and commissioning against code.
6. Operations and maintenance. What degrades, what fails, how you find a fault in a string, and what a maintenance visit consists of.

Where marks are actually lost

Not on vocabulary. On the calculations in the design domain, and specifically on temperature correction. A string that is correctly sized at 25 degrees can exceed an inverter's maximum input voltage on a cold bright morning, and the exam asks about exactly that. If you can do temperature-corrected open-circuit voltage without hesitating, you have dealt with the hardest reliable source of marks in the paper.

The second is units. Watts against watt-hours, kilowatts against kilowatt-hours. It sounds beneath mentioning and it costs people the exam.

How to practise it

Reading about a calculation is not practising it. Our question bank is 140 questions with the working shown on video for every one, because the useful part of a practice question is the reasoning rather than the letter of the answer. Some are published free on the worked-questions page so you can judge the standard before paying for anything.

Common questions