Texas Journeyman PrepGetting licensed in Texas

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

The license that only lets you put back what was already there

The hours are the easy part. What decides whether this license is any use to you is a rule saying a replacement has to match the thing it replaced.

On this page
  1. What the statute asks for
  2. Electrical maintenance work is a defined term, and it is narrow
  3. Who ends up holding one
  4. The exemption sitting next to it
  5. So why hold the license
  6. The hours that travel, and the hours that do not
  7. The examination, and a pass rate worth reading twice
  8. Fee, renewal and continuing education
  9. What this page cites

What the statute asks for

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.158 sets two conditions: at least 8,000 hours of on-the-job training under the supervision of a master electrician or a maintenance electrician, and a passing score on the maintenance electrician examination.

The supervision clause is the unusual half. A maintenance electrician can sign the hours for the next maintenance electrician. The journeyman electrician requirement at Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155 asks for a master electrician and accepts nobody else.

Chapter 1305 never defines the job. Its definitions section runs from advisory board through pool-related electrical maintenance and carries no entry for maintenance electrician (Tex. Occ. Code 1305.002), which is why summaries of this license tend to describe the hours and then stop.

The definition sits in the rule instead. 16 TAC 73.10 describes a maintenance electrician as a licensee working under the general supervision of a master electrician, on behalf of an electrical contractor or an employing governmental entity, performing electrical maintenance work.

Electrical maintenance work is a defined term, and it is narrow

Everything the license permits turns on that phrase, and the phrase has its own paragraph in 16 TAC 73.10.

It covers the replacement or repair of existing electrical apparatus, equipment, machinery or controls in, on, outside or attached to a building, residence, structure, property or premises. Then it attaches limits.

All replacements or repairs must be of the same rating and type as the existing installation.

16 TAC 73.10

The same paragraph bars improvements made in order to comply with the codes adopted under Chapter 1305, and it puts the installation of anything new beyond the scope of the existing installation outside the definition entirely (16 TAC 73.10).

So the license is a like-for-like license. A failed contactor comes out and the same contactor goes back in. Upsizing a feeder because the load grew is not maintenance work under this rule, and neither is adding a circuit.

The third limit is the one that surprises people, because it reads backwards. Correcting an existing installation so that it complies with the adopted code is an improvement in the rule's own words, and improvements are not what this license buys you.

Who ends up holding one

You keep a building or a plant running from the inside. A school district, a hospital, a hotel, a manufacturing floor, a campus. You are on the payroll of the place whose equipment you work on, you fix what breaks, and you are not selling electrical work to the public.

That description is close enough to the exemption at Tex. Occ. Code 1305.003(a)(8) that most people who could qualify for this license also do not need it, and that is the real decision on this page.

The exemption sitting next to it

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.003(a)(8) lifts the licensing act off electrical work done by someone who does not perform electrical work for the public, who is regularly employed as a maintenance person or maintenance electrician for a business, and whose work does not involve installing electrical equipment during new construction.

All three conditions have to hold at once. If they do, the act asks you to hold nothing at all.

That is a narrower shelter than it looks. New construction there is not decided by what the site looks like, and the exemption is attached to your employment rather than to you. Change employer, or take on a job for somebody outside the business, and it stops covering you on the day the facts change.

So why hold the license

Because the license is yours and the exemption is your employer's.

The license does not lapse when you change jobs, it is not conditioned on who signs your paycheck, and it is the thing you can show a hiring manager who has never read Chapter 1305 and is not going to.

Against that, it is a scope-limited credential that never becomes a journeyman license, and it carries an annual fee and four hours of continuing education that the exemption does not.

The hours that travel, and the hours that do not

This is where the maintenance route quietly costs people years.

Hours signed by a maintenance electrician satisfy Tex. Occ. Code 1305.158 and do not satisfy Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155, because the journeyman requirement names a master electrician and stops there. Same work, same building, same 8,000 hours, and only the supervisor's license decides whether they count for the next license up.

Nothing about holding this license blocks the journeyman route. The department verifies hours against the supervising licensee rather than against your job title, so time worked under a master electrician counts whether or not you were a licensed maintenance electrician while you worked it.

Maintenance electrician applicants are among the license types that must document their on-the-job training with the application (16 TAC 73.20(a)(1)), and the applicant then has one year from the date of filing to complete every requirement, examination included (16 TAC 73.20(b)).

The examination, and a pass rate worth reading twice

There is one, and it is one of the nine Texas electrician examinations PSI administers. Every individual license except the two apprentice licenses has one of its own.

The PSI candidate information bulletin revised 9 July 2026 puts this exam at 60 scored items with 5 unscored, 180 minutes, and 70 percent to pass. The $64 examination fee goes to PSI and is separate from the $20 you pay the department to apply.

TDLR published 8 passes from 18 tests for fiscal 2025, which is 44.44 percent and the highest rate on its table. It is also the smallest sample on that table. One more pass would have made it 50 percent, so the ranking says more about the size of the group than about the difficulty of the paper.

Fee, renewal and continuing education

Twenty dollars to apply, at 16 TAC 73.80(a)(7). Twenty to renew, at 16 TAC 73.80(b)(7), which is the figure for any license expiring on or after 1 February 2014. A replacement license is another twenty (16 TAC 73.80(d)(5)).

Twelve months from the issue date, renewed each year after that (16 TAC 73.22(a)). Nothing about the term is tied to a calendar year, so two people licensed in the same trade renew on two different dates.

Four hours of continuing education before each renewal (16 TAC 73.25(b)). The exemption carries no continuing education duty, because it carries no license, and that is the only running cost the licensed route adds.

What this page cites

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Bring your own current copy of the National Electrical Code. The Texas exam is open book.

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Built and maintained by Jeff Clerisier, Trojan Digital Marketing.

Every rule here is cited to the section it comes from, and corrections are logged in public with the date. This is study material rather than electrical advice, and it does not replace your own code book or your inspector.