SOLAS Electrical Apprenticeship study guide
SOLAS Electrical Apprenticeship · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Electrical Craft Apprenticeship is one of Ireland's craft apprenticeships, promoted through the Generation Apprenticeship brand and the apprenticeship.ie portal run with SOLAS, the Higher Education Authority and the Government of Ireland. It is a structured, employer-led route into the electrical trade: apprentices are hired by an employer and combine on-the-job training with off-the-job phases delivered by an approved provider, progressing towards craft qualification as an electrician. The SOLAS Electrical Apprenticeship study guide has 6 sections and about 2,186 words.
01Electrical Craft Practice - Installation, Testing and Maintenance
This domain tests your hands-on competence: installing to the National Rules, isolating and proving dead, carrying out the standard tests in the correct order, recording results on the certification, and keeping existing installations serviceable through planned maintenance and systematic fault-finding. Dead tests come before live tests, always: continuity of protective and main equipotential bonding conductors, and of circuit protective conductors; continuity of ring final circuit conductors (r1, rn, r2); insulation resistance at 500 V DC, minimum 1 MΩ, main switch off and sensitive loads, SPDs and dimmers disconnected; polarity.
373 words, about 2 min02Electrical Science and Principles
This domain tests the physics and circuit mathematics you use to size, diagnose and explain installations: Ohm's law and power, series and parallel networks, AC quantities, reactance and impedance, three-phase relationships, transformers and power factor. V = IR; P = VI = I²R = V²/R; energy in kWh = kW × hours.
330 words, about 2 min03Electrical Installation Technology and Wiring Systems
This domain tests your ability to choose the right wiring system and cable, and to prove it is protected and within voltage drop limits for the duty it serves. It links the protective device, the installation method and the environment.
406 words, about 2 min04Regulations, Standards and Safety
This domain tests how well you can apply the National Rules for Electrical Installations (ET101, derived from the HD 60364 / IEC 60364 family) alongside Irish health and safety law, and how you demonstrate compliance through isolation practice and certification. Parts 1 to 7 cover scope and definitions, protection, selection and erection of equipment, verification, and special locations such as bathrooms, swimming pools, construction sites and agricultural premises.
369 words, about 2 min05Industrial Electronics
This domain covers what sits between the wiring and the machine: rectification and smoothing, switching devices, sensing and signal conditioning, PLC input/output interfacing, variable-speed drives, and the protection and screening needed where electronics meets industrial noise. Half-wave rectification gives roughly 0.45 Vrms; a full-wave bridge gives roughly 0.9 Vrms, minus two diode drops (about 1.4 V for silicon).
368 words, about 2 min06Control and Renewable Energy Systems
This domain joins control engineering to generation: contactor and relay logic, motor starting, PLC programming, and the design and safe grid connection of PV, heat pump, wind and battery systems. A direct-on-line starter uses a contactor with a seal-in contact, a stop button and a thermal overload relay.
340 words, about 2 min