I've been in the electric utility industry for about six years now, mostly on the operations side, and my company pushed me to get NERC certified about eight months ago. First attempt I scored a 68 — passing is 70, so yeah, brutal. I was devastated honestly, especially after putting in what I thought was solid prep time.
What changed for round two was actually being more systematic. I found a decent NERC practice test bank online and drilled those until I was consistently hitting 80%+ before I even thought about rescheduling. The difference between just reading the NERC study guide cover to cover versus actively testing yourself is night and day. I'd read a chapter, close it, then do 20-30 questions on that specific topic before moving on.
The areas that tripped me up most were CIP-007 and the incident reporting timelines — those details are very specific and the exam loves edge cases. Anyone else currently grinding through prep? Happy to share more specific exam tips if it helps.