What Is A PVTS?

The Plain Answer: What a PVTS Is

When people ask "what is a PVTS," the answer on this site is specific: it is the PV Technical Sales Certification (PVTS), a board certification for professionals who sell solar photovoltaic systems and need to do so with real technical grounding. The issuer's own documents refer to both "PV Technical Sales (PVTS)" and the "PV Technical Sales Professional" as the person who holds it.

The acronym is also used elsewhere in other industries and by other bodies, so it is worth being precise. Everything in this article refers only to the NABCEP credential. If you have landed here from a search for a different "PVTS," the facts below will not apply to it.

If you want a shorter orientation first, our pages on what PVTS certification is and what PVTS stands for cover the basics. This article goes further into how the credential is earned, tested, and maintained.

Who Issues It and What It Proves

The credential is issued by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP). Exam delivery runs through Meazure Learning, which administers computer-based testing at a test center or by live remote proctoring. According to the 2025 handbook delivery table, both options are available for initial PVTS examinations and for retakes.

What the credential is meant to signal is the combination of two skill sets that do not always travel together: the commercial skill of qualifying and closing a solar customer, and the technical skill of assessing a site, conceptualizing a system, estimating performance, and building an honest financial case. A PVTS holder is expected to sell in a way that survives engineering and permitting scrutiny.

Who Actually Pursues This Credential

The natural candidates are people whose job is to turn a solar lead into a signed contract and who want a third-party credential backing their technical credibility. That includes residential and commercial solar sales consultants, business development managers at installers and developers, and sales-oriented estimators who prepare proposals. Contractors and electricians who have moved into the sales side of the business also fit.

The credential is most useful where a customer, a financier, or an employer values proof that a seller understands the engineering behind the quote. Because of the way eligibility works, it favors people who have already been selling and installing for some time rather than newcomers. For a closer look at the employer side, see our overview of PVTS jobs.

How You Qualify: Category A and Category B

You cannot simply register and sit the exam. NABCEP requires an approved application first, and the prerequisites are substantial. Every candidate must be at least 18, agree to the ethics agreement, hold an OSHA 10 Construction card (or a government equivalent), and document 58 advanced PV training hours completed within five calendar years. Of those, at least 40 must be advanced PVTS-JTA hours delivered by an accepted accredited or recognized provider, and up to 18 may come from permitted additional sources.

Beyond training, you must prove sales experience through one of two categories:

How Sales Credits are counted

Under the 2025 handbook, a project earns credits by system size: 2 Sales Credits for 1-24 kW, 3 for 25-999 kW, and 4 for 1 MW or more. Be careful with older material. An earlier announcement used "Project Credit" wording and different size-band boundaries, and the 2025 rules supersede it.

Several conditions apply to every qualifying project:

• It must have been sold within the preceding two years.
• At least half of the qualifying projects must be both sold and installed.
• No more than one relative or same-address project may count, and that one must be sold and installed.

The paperwork behind each sale

Documentation is where applications stall. For each sale you submit a letter signed by senior management on company letterhead. Completed installations also need final permit or inspection documentation, while sold-but-uninstalled projects need fully signed customer and contractor contracts. Gathering these from former employers or busy colleagues can take longer than studying, so start early. Our PVTS requirements guide walks through the eligibility checklist in detail.

What the Exam Looks Like

The exam contains 70 multiple-choice questions with four answer options each. Of those, 60 are scored and 10 are unidentified pilot items that do not count, and you will not know which are which. You have 4 hours, which is a generous allowance for 70 questions, so pacing is rarely about speed and more about careful reading of scenario details and numbers.

Conditions are closed-book under the handbook rules. You get an on-screen basic scientific calculator; personal calculators, notes, and study books are not allowed. Importantly, the PVTS is excluded from the current FAQ and handbook lists that grant National Electrical Code reference access, so do not plan on having a codebook available. Approved accommodations are available through the issuer.

Scoring

The passing score is 75 on a scaled 0-99 range. This is a scaled score, not a percentage of questions answered correctly, so you should not assume that 75 means 75% right. For more on how to read this, see our explanation of the PVTS passing score.

Expect numerical questions that need the on-screen calculator: energy production estimates, simple payback, savings over time, and sizing relationships. Practice doing these without a spreadsheet. Our PVTS practice tests are built to mirror that closed-book, calculator-limited environment.

The Six Content Domains

The exam content comes from the issuer's PV Technical Sales Job Task Analysis (August 2018, V.08.18), which publishes six weighted domains. These are official examination objectives, not a training curriculum, so a course's chapter order may not match them. The published weights total 100.10%; the issuer attributes that to rounding, and the decimals are kept here as published.

For a domain-by-domain breakdown with study emphasis, see the complete PVTS exam domains guide. The official outline PDF is hosted by NABCEP, and reading it directly is worthwhile.

Fees, Timing, and Scheduling Mechanics

The $500 does not include the 58 hours of training, which is often the larger expense. For a fuller breakdown, see our PVTS certification cost guide.

Deadlines

Once your application is approved, you have one year of examination eligibility. Scheduling instructions also mention a six-month deadline, but the issuer's wording is inconsistent about whether that clock starts at application approval or at the Notice to Schedule. The safe approach is to follow the dates printed in your own candidate notice rather than relying on a summary. More scheduling detail is in our PVTS exam dates guide.

Keeping the Credential: The Three-Year Cycle

The certification is valid for three years. You apply for recertification during year three, at a cost of $390. Renewal requires 30 continuing education hours: 18 PVTS JTA hours plus 12 renewable energy hours, with 2 building or fire-code hours counted inside the 12.

You must also document continued industry involvement on signed company letterhead. Acceptable routes include:

• A decision-making role in proposals for at least three completed installations during the cycle
• 120 qualifying teaching hours
• One year of qualifying business or training leadership
• 36 hours of qualifying industry leadership

What We Can and Cannot Say About Outcomes

Candidates often want a pass rate or a salary number. The issuer sources reviewed for this article do not establish a credential-specific pass rate, nor a pay premium attributable to the certification alone. Rather than guess, we leave those figures out. You can read our discussion in what the data shows on PVTS pass rates, the PVTS salary guide, and the analysis of whether the certification is worth it.

What can be said qualitatively: because eligibility already demands documented sales and substantial training, the pool of people who reach the exam is self-selected. Difficulty is best judged against your own sales and technical background, which we explore in how hard the PVTS exam is.

Sequencing Your Preparation Around the Weights

The only study framework worth using here is one tied to the blueprint. Because Qualifying Prospects and Site Analysis together account for 51.70% of the published weighting, they deserve the earliest and longest attention, while Performance Analysis is the lightest domain and a good one to fold into a review block.

Our PVTS study guide expands on this approach, and the PVTS cheat sheet condenses the facts above for last-minute review. For hands-on repetition, use the PVTS Exam Prep practice questions.

Frequently Asked Questions