Wisconsin Residential Journeyman Electrician License: Requirements, Experience, and How to Apply

Wisconsin Residential Journeyman Electrician License: Requirements and How to Apply

Wisconsin licenses electricians through the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS). Alongside the general Journeyman Electrician license, DSPS issues a Residential Journeyman Electrician license, and the experience it asks for is residential electrical work. Here is what it takes to get one by examination.

Experience

DSPS asks for 1,000 hours a year of residential electrical work for three years.

School can count toward that: each full-time semester counts as 500 hours, up to 2,000 hours in total.

Applying and testing

1. Apply through LicensE, DSPS's online licensing system, with your documented residential experience.
2. Pay the exam fees: $95 to Pearson VUE and $30 to DSPS.
3. Sit the exam at a DSPS paper-exam site or a Pearson VUE computer-based testing center in Wisconsin: 100 questions in 4 hours, open book, 70% to pass. What is on the exam covers the topics.

Wisconsin now tests the 2023 NEC. SPS 316.007 adopted it effective September 1, 2026 (it replaced the 2017 NEC), and DSPS says the trades exam questions reflect the change from October 1, 2026. Prep material that mentions PSI as the testing vendor, or the 2014 or 2017 NEC, is out of date.

Keeping the license

Wisconsin electrical licenses run on four-year terms and expire on June 30. A residential journeyman needs 18 hours of continuing education each term to renew.

Moving up

The next step on the residential side is the Residential Master Electrician license: five years of 1,000 hours of residential work. See Wisconsin Residential Master Electrician requirements. If your experience is broader than dwellings, compare the general Wisconsin Journeyman Electrician requirements.

Getting ready

Try our free 10-question practice test on the 2023 NEC, or see the full Wisconsin Residential Journeyman Electrician exam prep. Every Wisconsin license we cover is on the Wisconsin electrician hub.