Once an eligible small scale system ​is installed and capable of producing electricity or delivering hot water, owners and agents may create small-scale technology certificates in the REC Registry. Before these certificates can be sold or traded, they are audited by the Clean Energy Regulator to ensure they are valid, and registered to make them available for sale.

Fees

​To participate in the Renewable Energy Target schemes and access the REC Registry, users are required to pay a fee when they create and surrender small-scale technology certificates (STCs) and large-scale generation certificates (LGCs). These fees are payable in accordance with the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Regulations 2011.​

Certificate validation

The Clean Energy Regulator validates all certificates in the order they have been created in the REC Registry.

The Clean Energy Regulator aims to validate small-scale technology certificates within four to six weeks of receiving all required documentation, but failure to provide complete or correct documentation may result in delay.

If you have provided incorrect information and need to request the certificates to be failed in the REC Registry before they are validated, please contact the Clean Energy Regulator as soon as possible.

All certificates created in the REC Registry are audited. If there are duplicates or errors this can slow down the Clean Energy Regulator's administrative processes, including the time taken to validate correctly created certificates.

Certificate registration

After small-scale technology certificates are created and validated, they are listed as 'pending registration' in the REC Registry.

If there are fees to be paid, they will be listed under 'outstanding fee items' in your REC Registry account summary, and must be paid before the certificates are registered.

• The first 250 certificates you create are free and do not incur a fee. These will automatically appear as registered in your account summary.
• Any certificates created after the first 250 require the payment of 47c per certificate for SGUs and 8c per certificate for solar water heaters.
• When the threshold is met, fees apply to all created certificates, including the original batch created under the threshold.

If you create 250 certificates or more and need to pay certificate fees, follow these steps in the REC Registry:

1. Go to 'Fees and invoices' and select 'Fees' to view outstanding fee items.
2. Select the appropriate outstanding fee items by clicking in its checkbox.
3. Click 'Create payment advice', the page will automatically redirect to the 'Invoice' page
4. View or print out the invoice to be paid.
5. Select 'Pay by credit card' or 'Pay by BPAY' (BPAY payments may take 10 days to clear).
6. Complete the credit card payment information and select 'Submit', a success message will appear at the top of the page.
7. Settled invoices can be found on the 'Invoices' page.
8. The small-scale technology certificates are then classified registered and appear in your account summary under 'Certificate holdings'. ​