Texas electrical contractor license renewal: what the board requires

Individuals hold their own license: apprentice, journeyman, master, residential wireman, and several others. Anyone doing non-exempt electrical work in Texas must hold a license and work through a licensed contractor.

The firm holds the business license. For general electrical work, that is the Electrical Contractor license. Electrical sign work and residential appliance installation have their own contractor license types.

Every Electrical Contractor must employ a master electrician of record, or hold a master electrician license itself. A master electrician’s license can back only one contractor, unless that master owns more than half the business.

Individual electrician licenses in Texas are valid for one year and renewed annually. TDLR sends a reminder about 60 days before expiration, but renewing on time stays the licensee’s responsibility.

One honest caveat: the contractor renewal page does not restate the one-year term in prose. We read the annual cycle from the fee and expiration table on that page, and we recommend confirming the date on your own renewal notice.

Continuing education must be taken inside the term of the license being renewed, not carried over from an earlier cycle.

Individual license holders need 4 hours of continuing education from a TDLR-registered provider before each renewal. That covers masters, journeymen, residential wiremen, maintenance electricians, sign electricians and apprentices.

The contractor license itself has no CE requirement. The hours fall on the individual licenses your crews hold, which is why a shop with ten licensed electricians tracks ten CE deadlines.

Hold more than one license type and you still need only 4 hours total for the cycle. Coursework must cover the current NEC, Texas electrician law, TDLR rules, and NFPA 70E safety.

The Electrical Contractor renewal fee is $110. For comparison, a master electrician renewal is $45 and a journeyman renewal is $30, per person per year.

There is no separate late fee. An expired license renews at an increased fee instead: $165 within 90 days of expiration, $220 after that. For a firm with several license holders, those increases multiply quickly.

Practicing on an expired license is not authorized. A lapsed contractor license means the firm can no longer be the licensed contractor through which electrical work is performed.

Expired 18 months or less: renew online at the increased fee. Expired 18 to 36 months: renewal is by mail only, with a request form and a certificate of insurance matching the business name. Expired more than 36 months: the license cannot be renewed, and the firm re-applies as a new applicant.

Insurance is checked at renewal: $300,000 per occurrence, $600,000 aggregate, and $300,000 products and completed operations aggregate.

Licentra reads the license PDFs you already have, builds the renewal calendar, and drafts each renewal’s checklist from the board’s own page, with the source link and check date on every item. Reminders go out by email well before each deadline.

We never file on your behalf and never promise compliance. We show what the source says and when we verified it; the filing decision stays with you.

Open the demo to see a sample renewal, or see how Licentra works. More state guides live on the guides index.