1.1 About the NETA Level 2 Exam

About the NETA ETT Level 2 Certified Assistant Technician Exam

Quick Answer: The NETA Level 2 exam is a closed-book, computer-based exam delivered by Pearson VUE. NETA publishes the specification directly: 100 multiple-choice items, closed-book, onsite proctored, with two hours allowed. It is scored on a 200–500 scale and you need a 410 to pass. The content is split across four ANSI/NETA ETT Detailed Content Outline domains — Safety (15%), Electrical Testing Fundamentals and Theory (25%), Component Testing (55%), and Systems and Commissioning (5%) — and the exam fee is managed through your NETA Accredited Company, not posted publicly.

The NETA ETT Level 2 Certified Assistant Technician exam is administered by the InterNational Electrical Testing Association (NETA) under the ANSI/NETA ETT standard. It is the first fully certified tier in the NETA Electrical Testing Technician hierarchy: Level 1 is a Trainee assessed by the employer, while Level 2 is the first credential that requires a proctored Pearson VUE exam and roughly two years of qualifying field experience.

Level 2 technicians perform limited testing and service work under the direct supervision of a Level 3 Certified Technician or Level 4 Senior Certified Technician. They are expected to understand lockout/tagout, arc-flash and shock hazards, and how to assure their own safety on a test floor — but they do not independently sign off on acceptance test reports or run large projects.

Exam Format at a Glance

NETA publishes the Level 2 exam specification on its Technician Certification page: a 100-item, multiple-choice, closed-book, onsite proctored examination with two hours allowed and a passing scaled score of 410 on a 200–500 scale. Because there are 100 items and 120 minutes, your working budget is about 1 minute 12 seconds per question — comfortable for recall items, tight if you stall on calculations, so flag and move on rather than burning four minutes on one transformer problem. The same page publishes the domain weights — 15% Safety, 25% Fundamentals and Theory, 55% Component Testing, 5% Systems and Commissioning — so more than half of your study effort should be aimed at component test procedures, acceptance criteria, and the standards that govern them.

The Four DCO Domains

Every NETA exam (Levels 2, 3, and 4) is built from the same four ANSI/NETA ETT Detailed Content Outline domains, but the weighting and depth shift by level. At Level 2 the domains are:

1. Safety (15%) — NFPA 70E approach boundaries and PPE, OSHA 1910.147 lockout/tagout and 1910.269, energized work permits, temporary protective grounds, induced-voltage mitigation, and hipot testing safety.
2. Electrical Testing Fundamentals and Theory (25%) — Three-phase systems, grounded vs. grounding conductors, ANSI device numbers (27, 50, 51, 59, 86, 87), CT/PT theory, IDMT curves, voltage unbalance, and symmetrical components basics.
3. Component Testing (55%) — Insulation resistance (IR), polarization index (PI), dielectric absorption ratio (DAR), transformer turns ratio (TTR), winding resistance, contact resistance (Ductor), ground electrode testing (fall-of-potential and clamp-on), VLF and DC hipot, vacuum bottle integrity, and surge protective device verification.
4. Systems and Commissioning (5%) — Automatic transfer switch testing, control-circuit IR, as-found/as-left documentation, NFPA 110 emergency system tests, and restoration/handover workflow.

A common Level 2 trap is treating Safety as a small domain and skimming it. Safety items are conceptually quick, but the boundary distances, PPE category cal/cm² values, and glove class tables are heavily memorization-driven and easy points if you drill them. Component Testing dominates the exam, so do not under-prepare there.

The 5% weight on Systems and Commissioning surprises some candidates who have spent significant field time on automatic transfer switches and NFPA 110 generators. Keep in mind that a 5% domain on a roughly 100-item exam is only about five items, so this is a domain to cover competently but not to over-invest in relative to Component Testing. The exam rewards breadth across all four domains plus depth in Component Testing — not over-specialization in any one area.

It is also worth understanding what the exam is not. The NETA Level 2 exam is not a journeyman electrician exam, not a PE-style engineering exam, and not a design exam. It assumes you can already execute tests on real equipment under supervision, and it checks that you know the procedures, acceptance criteria, and safety boundaries well enough to do so without being coached step-by-step. Field time is the prerequisite; the exam certifies that the field time stuck.

Closed-Book, but Not Reference-Free

The exam is closed-book — you cannot bring NFPA 70E, the NEC, or your own notes into the test center. However, NETA provides an on-screen calculator and the NETA Formulae Sheet during the exam. That means you should not waste memorization bandwidth on formula constants you will be handed; instead, drill the application of those formulas (when to use PI vs. DAR, what TTR acceptance tolerance applies, how to interpret a micro-ohm contact resistance reading against a baseline).

Exam Fee and Registration

NETA does not publish the current Level 2 exam fee on its public website. The fee is set by NETA and managed through your NETA Accredited Company (NAC). If you are not currently employed by a NAC (or a NETA Approved Military Organization), you are not eligible to sit for the exam — see Section 1.2 for the full eligibility chain.

Official Resources

• NETA Technician Certification — Level definitions, experience requirements, and the current Level 2 exam specification.
• NETA Exam Preparation — Detailed Content Outlines, the Formulae Sheet, and the reference list.
• Pearson VUE NETA Scheduling — Test center scheduling and test-day policies.
• NETA Exam Reminders — The Authorization to Test flow and the 60-day retake waiting period.