Keep the lights on. Design and protect the grid that carries electricity from dams and reactors to your house.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $105,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $70,000 at the lower end to about $165,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 8 years after high school, on the usual route.
$37,000 to $87,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a licence or registration before you can work.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$105,000
Lower end
$70,000
Upper end
$165,000
Job Bank's page is titled design engineer, electrical power systems, inside the electrical engineers group. Its national median is $50.67 an hour, about $105,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower end ($33.65) and upper end ($79.23) are the bottom and top of the range for everyone in the group.
$56 an hour
The Job Bank median in Saskatchewan, the highest in Canada
Quebec is $53.85 and Ontario $50. Nova Scotia is lowest at $47.18. Most people start as an EIT (engineer-in-training) at a utility or a consulting firm.
Roughly, all in
$37,000 to $87,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The cost is a four or five year engineering degree at roughly $9,000 to $17,000 a year, and nothing else comes close. On top of that sit the professional practice exam at about $250 to $300 and the application for the P.Eng (Professional Engineer) licence, then a few hundred dollars a year to keep it. Safety training for live substations is paid for by the employer and legally required before you go near the equipment. Co-op terms at utilities are paid work, so many students cut the real bill below the high figure.
Co-op terms at utilities are paid, and many students are offered a job before they graduate.
Defined-benefit pension
One that pays a set amount every month for life. Most large Canadian utilities still offer one, which is rare now.
Job security
The grid has to run whatever the economy does.
Standby pay
Extra money for being on call when the system has a problem.
Paid licence fees, training and professional memberships
The exact path from high school to qualified.
An electrical engineering degree with power courses, then supervised work at a utility or a consultant.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Calculus, Advanced Functions, Physics and Chemistry. Physics is the one that matters most.
Accredited electrical engineering degree
4 to 5 years with co-op
Choose power and energy electives: machines, power electronics, protection, system analysis. Few schools offer a separate power systems degree.
Work terms at a utility
During the degree
Provincial utilities, system operators and consultants all take co-op students, and most hiring starts there.
Engineer-in-training
About 4 years (2 in Quebec)
About four years of supervised experience (24 months in Quebec) registered with your provincial regulator.
P.Eng (professional engineer) licence
After about 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Pass the law and ethics exam and submit your experience record. Then you can seal designs for substations and lines.
Physics
Required, and electricity is the part you will live in.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required, usually with a minimum around 70%.
Chemistry
Required for admission at most engineering schools.
Computer science
Optional. Grid analysis and protection settings run on software.
You need a provincial P.Eng (professional engineer) licence to take responsibility for grid designs. The grid itself follows reliability standards that are enforced across North America, plus provincial rules from bodies like Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator. That means your designs are audited, your settings are recorded, and changes go through review. Engineers who like a clear rulebook do well here.
Almost any accredited electrical engineering degree works if you pick power electives.
Ontario
Waterloo has one of the largest power and energy research groups in North America. Toronto, Queen's, McMaster and Western also teach power.
Quebec
Polytechnique Montreal, Laval and Sherbrooke, close to the biggest hydro system in the country.
West
University of British Columbia, Alberta, Calgary, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, all beside big utilities.
Atlantic
New Brunswick, Dalhousie and Memorial.
Quebec students reach university after a 2 year CEGEP (public college) diploma, so the electrical engineering degree takes about 4 years, and the licence comes from the OIQ (Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, the Quebec order of engineers) through its own program and exam.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Take Secondary V math in the Technical and Scientific or the Science sequence, plus Secondary V chemistry and physics. All three are required for the Science DEC (Diploma of College Studies).
Science DEC at a CEGEP
2 years
The 2 year Science program (200.B1). In English at Dawson and the other English colleges. Engineering schools look for its calculus, physics and chemistry courses and your R score (the Quebec college ranking mark).
Bachelor's in electrical engineering
About 4 years
About 4 years for CEGEP graduates. Concordia, in English, has a power and renewable energy course group, with power systems and protection. In French at Polytechnique Montréal or ÉTS (École de technologie supérieure).
Become a CPI (candidate to the engineering profession)
Before or right after graduating
Apply to the order once you have 60 university credits or your degree, $180. Joining the program costs $520 plus tax, half price within 6 months of graduating.
24 months of supervised work, then the exam
At least 2 years, at most 5
Work under an engineer you declare to the order. Paid internships done after 60 credits can count. Add 25 to 30 hours of online training ($345) and a multiple choice exam ($285, 60% to pass).
Show French, get the permit
End of the program
A Quebec high school diploma counts, even from an English school. Otherwise you pass the 3 hour exam of the Office québécois de la langue française (the Quebec French language office), which costs nothing. Then the order issues your permit.
Hydro-Québec, the provincial power utility, takes college and university interns in engineering, research and technical roles for at least 12 weeks. University interns must be enrolled at a Canadian university and going back to class after the internship. Paid internships done after 60 university credits can count toward the supervised work the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec (the Quebec order of engineers) requires.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Protection and control
Designing how faults are detected and isolated. A scarce skill.
High voltage direct current experience
Long transmission lines in Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia use it.
Renewable integration
Connecting wind, solar and batteries to a grid designed for big spinning generators.
Power systems master's degree
A common route into planning and specialist roles.
Software skills
Python plus grid simulation programs. Modelling is most of planning work.
A driver's licence
Substations and lines are spread across a province.
Field time
A summer with a line crew or in a substation teaches you what drawings leave out.
Clear writing
Studies and reports are the product in consulting.
A utility gives you a pension, steady hours and deep knowledge of one system you will know better than anyone. A consulting firm gives you more projects, more travel and faster promotion, with more pressure on deadlines and billable hours. Plenty of people do five years at a utility and then move to consulting, or the reverse when they want their evenings back.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Morning reviewing a substation design: single line drawings, breaker ratings, protection settings. Mid morning on a call with a developer connecting a solar farm and asking why the study takes months. Afternoon running load flow and short circuit cases to check the system stays stable if a line drops. Once in a while you drive out to a substation, sign in, and see the steel and copper behind the drawings.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
About 60% of Canada's electricity comes from hydro dams, and Canada was the third largest generator of hydroelectricity in the world in 2023. That shapes the whole grid: very long lines carrying power from remote rivers to distant cities.
In August 2003 a cascading failure blacked out Ontario and much of the northeastern United States, affecting around 50 million people. The reliability rules that power systems engineers work under today were tightened because of it.
Canada's grid is tied into the American one and Canada is usually a net exporter of electricity. In 2023 net exports fell 46%, to 27.6 terawatt-hours, mainly because dry weather left less water behind the dams.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Engineers first, then the rest of the field. See every career in engineering.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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