You lost a portion. Here is what it costs and what the clock says

What a retake costs and when

The retake examination fee is $78. That's the same figure as the original sitting, and the bulletin prices a failure on one portion and a failure on both at the same amount.

Nobody publishes a waiting period. TDLR says you may retake each examination as many times as needed until you pass, and PSI says candidates are allowed to test through their eligibility period. Read that silence as an absence of a rule, so what constrains your next attempt is the appointment calendar and your own readiness.

The clock that does exist sits in 16 TAC 73.20(b): one year from the date the department received your application to satisfy every requirement, the examination included. Count from that date. A candidate who filed in February and lost a portion in August has six months of window left, and that figure decides how much of it goes on preparation and how much goes on waiting for a convenient date.

Get the numbers for your own record from PSI on the line TDLR publishes, (833) 333-4741, or from the department. A study site is the wrong place to confirm a fee, this one included.

The question nobody publishes

Whether a portion you passed stands while you re-sit the other one is the question that decides your study plan, and neither agency answers it in writing.

What's published: the two portions are scored separately and passed separately at seventy percent each, they run as separate administrations, and leftover time on the first portion stays there. The fee sentence draws the same distinction, pricing a failure of one portion and a failure of both identically.

What's absent: the bulletin, TDLR's examination page, TDLR's frequently asked questions and the examination rule at 16 TAC 73.21 were all read on 24 August 2026, and none of them says whether a passed portion banks or for how long it stands.

So telephone PSI, ask them to look at your record, and get the answer in writing where you can. A narrow answer points your preparation at one paper and one set of subject areas. A wide answer is something you want to know this week. Either way the one year window bounds it, because a passed portion cannot outlive the application it belongs to.

What the score report maps onto

A failing report carries more than a number. The bulletin describes it as a diagnostic report naming your strengths and weaknesses by examination type, and it prints at the site before you leave. A duplicate prints later from your online account.

Those strengths and weaknesses map onto the content outline the bulletin publishes, which is the outline the paper is built from. On the journeyman knowledge portion that is ten subject areas carrying 56 scored items between them, and on the calculations portion ten more carrying 24. A weak area on your report is therefore a named subject with a known item count, and you can work out roughly what it cost you.

Two readings are worth separating. One weak area with everything else solid is a study gap, and it is the cheapest kind to repair. Marks that sit even and mediocre across every area usually point at the clock, because a candidate who runs out of time guesses the tail and the guessing spreads the damage evenly. That second pattern responds to a per-question clock and it barely responds to more reading. This paragraph is our judgment drawn from what reports tend to show, and TDLR publishes no study behind it.

The margin seventy percent leaves

Seventy percent of 24 scored calculations items means 17 of them, so about seven wrong answers is the whole budget. On 56 scored knowledge items it means 40, which leaves about sixteen. The knowledge portion is the forgiving one and it is still where a slow lookup eats the margin.

Set the minutes against the same arithmetic. The journeyman knowledge portion allows 130 minutes for 59 items, about two minutes twelve seconds each. Calculations allows 110 minutes for 26, about four minutes fourteen. The master papers run 150 minutes for 75 items and 170 for 33. If your pace on the day was nowhere near those figures, that's the finding, and it outranks anything on the subject list.

The statewide numbers say the same thing from the other end. In fiscal 2025 the journeyman calculations portion passed 1,301 of 6,328 candidates, 20.56 percent, against 1,402 of 5,731 on the knowledge portion, 24.46 percent. Across every Texas electrical examination that year, 6,181 of 26,303 passed, which is 23.50 percent. You're in a large group and the group has a shape.

The area that recovers fastest

Of the 500 questions in the bank behind this site, 51 sit in the area covering exam behavior and the way the code book works: the arrangement of the chapters, the status of a note or an annex, which words make a rule mandatory, who interprets the text, and the Texas adoption sitting on top of all of it.

That area repays a retake cycle more than most, for two reasons. The items are lookups in a book you are allowed to have open, and 19 of the 51 turn on Article 90 or a section inside it, which is four pages you can read in one sitting. Seven of the 51 are Texas-specific, and those carry answers a national study guide gets wrong for you: the 7,000 hour figure that opens the examination against the 8,000 the license needs, a license term running one year from issuance where older sources quote a December date, and the state amendment that keeps a ground-fault exception in force here past its national expiry.

Work them with the navigation drills and the recovery shows up on the clock as well as on the mark.

The edition between two attempts

Texas adopted the 2026 National Electrical Code effective 1 September 2026 under 16 TAC 73.100, and the bulletin states in capitals that the examinations are referenced to that edition from that date.

If you lost a portion on the 2023 edition and rebook into September, the book on the desk changes between your two attempts. Your calculation method survives the change. The article numbers you tabbed are the casualty, and load calculations are the clean case, having left Article 220 for Article 120. The 2026 edition also ran a uniform section template through the book, putting listing requirements at .2 of an article and reconditioned equipment at .3, which displaced whatever used to occupy those slots.

One conflict to see in advance. Both published reference lists still named the 2023 edition when they were read on 24 August 2026, in the same PSI bulletin that carries the September line and on TDLR's own examination page. Checking the official reference list before you rebuy is the sensible move and it currently returns the wrong answer for a September date, which is why the edition page exists.

What the wait costs in licensing terms

Money is the small part. A retake is $78, the department application fee was $30 for a journeyman or $45 for a master, and all of it is non-refundable under 16 TAC 73.80(e).

The window is the expensive part. Every week between attempts comes out of the year 16 TAC 73.20(b) gives you, and when the year closes the application closes with it. Hours keep accruing in the meantime, which cuts the other way. A candidate who sat at 7,000 hours under 16 TAC 73.21(b) is walking toward the 8,000 that Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155 requires before the license issues, so a delayed pass sometimes costs nothing at all in license date terms.

Once you do pass, the result keeps for the license term plus three years under 16 TAC 60.56, which is four years on an annual license. That's longer than most people assume and it is the figure that takes the panic out of the hours question. Our page on the two hour figures sets out how the pair works and why both numbers are real.

What to do this week

Order matters here, because the first item changes what the rest of them are for.

1. Read the diagnostic report and write down the portion you lost and the two weakest subject areas on it.
2. Telephone PSI and ask whether the portion you passed stands, and until when.
3. Work out the date your one year window closes, counting from when TDLR received the application.
4. Decide whether you lost the paper to slow lookups, to method, to the clock, or to a mix of them, because each one takes different work.
5. Confirm which edition your next date falls under and buy the book if it changed.
6. Work the two weak areas under a clock until the sequence runs without thinking, and rebook after that.

The code-side version of this page lives in the question set, where the worked arithmetic behind each item and the section it comes from are set out in full. This page keeps to the licensing side: the fee, the window and the dates that decide when your next attempt can happen. Candidates who pass on a second attempt mostly studied differently, and the page on how wrong options are built is where that starts.

Questions people ask

How much does a retake cost in Texas?

Seventy-eight dollars, which is the same figure as the original sitting. The bulletin prices a failure on one portion and a failure on both portions at that same $78, so the figure holds whether one portion went wrong or both. The department application fee you already paid, $30 for a journeyman or $45 for a master under 16 TAC 73.80(a), stays paid, and 16 TAC 73.80(e) makes every fee in the electrician schedule non-refundable. Confirm the current examination figure on your own admission paperwork or with PSI before you book.

Is there a waiting period before I can sit again?

None is published. TDLR states that you may retake each examination as many times as needed until you pass, and PSI states that candidates are allowed to test through their eligibility period. Neither one names a cooling-off interval, so treat that as an absence of a rule and let the appointment calendar and your own readiness decide. The boundary that does exist is the eligibility window at 16 TAC 73.20(b), which runs one year from the date the department received your application and covers every requirement, the examination included.

Do I have to re-sit the portion I passed?

Neither PSI nor TDLR publishes an answer. The bulletin, the TDLR examination page, the TDLR frequently asked questions and the examination rule at 16 TAC 73.21 were read on 24 August 2026 and none of them states whether a passed portion is banked or for how long it stands. What is published is that the two portions are scored separately at seventy percent each and run as separate administrations. Telephone PSI, ask them to look at your own record, and get the answer in writing where you can, because your record is the only place it exists.

What is actually on the diagnostic report?

The bulletin describes it as a report naming your strengths and weaknesses by examination type, printed at the site with your score report. Those areas map onto the published content outline the paper is built from, which carries ten subject areas and 56 scored items on the journeyman knowledge portion and ten more areas with 24 scored items on the calculations portion. So a weak area is a named subject with a known item count behind it, and the arithmetic on what it cost you takes about a minute once you have the report open.

Does a failed attempt affect my hours or my license date?

The hours run on their own clock. 16 TAC 73.21(b) opens the journeyman examination at 7,000 hours and Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155 requires 8,000 before the license issues, so a candidate who sat early is still working toward that second figure while the retake is pending. In that case a delayed pass can cost nothing at all in license date terms. What it does spend is the one year eligibility window, and once you pass, 16 TAC 60.56 keeps the result for the license term plus three years, which is four years here.