Apply for accreditation

You must apply to be a registered person before applying to accredit your power station.

To apply you can be an individual, business or other legal person, but you must be an owner or operator of the power station.

If there is more than one owner or operator, the registered person who applied will become the nominated person after accreditation.

As the nominated person, you will:

• have the right to create large-scale generation certificates (LGC)
• be responsible for all accreditation requirements and ongoing compliance.

How to apply

You can apply for a registered person account through the REC Registry.

To apply, you must:

• meet the requirements of a fit and proper person
• be recognised by law as a legal person
• pay a registration fee.

We will assess your application within 6 weeks.

Relevant legislation: regulation 3L of the Regulations.

Once we approve your account, we'll give you your REC Registry login details.

You need to apply to upgrade your account to a 'power station account' in the REC Registry. As the registered person, you'll become the administrator for the upgraded account.

Complete a 'Power stations application' in REC Registry.

When to submit

If your power station is new, start drafting your application 10 to 12 weeks before your power station starts generating electricity. You can save your progress as you go.

If your power station is already generating electricity, you should submit your application as soon as possible. You can only claim LGCs after your accreditation start date.

Once all your required information is available and uploaded, submit your application.

How to complete your application

Use the relevant properly made checklist to help complete your application correctly.

• Properly made checklist for solar power stations
• Properly made checklist for power stations primarily for export and already generating 
• Properly made checklist for power stations primarily for export and undergoing commission.

While drafting your application in the REC Registry, upload your supporting documentation, including:

• approvals and component documentation
• metering and LGC method
• system owner or operator agreement.

You must complete a separate application for each power station you're applying for.

Before submitting, ensure you've met the eligibility requirements.

Withdrawing an application

You can withdraw your application at any time for any reason. For example:

• if your power station is delayed
• if you can't provide all supporting information and documentation.

You can submit a new application later if you withdraw an application.

Complete and incomplete applications

Once we receive an application, we initially assess if:

• it's 'properly made'
• the application is complete or incomplete.

To help ensure your application is complete, you should use our properly made checklist. If you can't complete a 'properly made' application straight away, we will accept a 'genuine application'. This means you have provided as much information as possible and supplied a reason for it not being complete.

Complete applications

Properly made applications include:

• all required information and supporting documentation
• reasonable justification if certain approvals aren't applicable to your power station.

Incomplete applications

An application is not properly made if:

• left intentionally empty
• too much information is missing
• it doesn't meet all the requirements.

If we deem that the application is incomplete, we will send you a 'properly made' checklist with missing requirements for you to review and satisfy before your application will be deemed 'properly made'. We will also update your application status to ‘withdrawn pending resubmission’.

We will not assess applications that are not properly made until they are updated with the required information. A properly made application must be submitted within 3 months of initial submission.

If a properly made application is not received, we'll update incomplete application statuses to 'withdrawn' in the public register. Participants will not be able to proceed further with that application. We do not refund application fees for incomplete applications we've withdrawn.

The date you pay your application fee will still be considered when determining your accreditation start date, as long as the application is properly made within 3 months.

After submitting your application, pay the fee in the REC Registry. Make sure you have permission to make the payment.

Fees vary depending on the power station's:

• installed capacity
• renewable power baseline.

Relevant legislation: regulation 28 of the Regulations.

New power stations generating electricity after 1 January 1997 will have a zero baseline. Power stations can qualify for a special baseline. We'll determine your power station baseline when making our accreditation decision.

Relevant legislation: schedule 3 of the Regulations.

We will assess your application to determine if it:

• meets all requirements for a properly made application
• meets all eligibility criteria.

If we need more information, we'll let you know via email. Ensure you respond to all points in the email.

We may refuse your application if:

• it's not complete
• it's not eligible
• it's missing required documents
• you don't respond to a request for information (RFI) within a specified timeframe.

We will make a decision within 6 weeks of considering your application as properly made. If we issue an RFI, we don't include the response period in our 6-week period.

Relevant legislation: sections 13 and 14 of the Act.

Time limit extensions

You can request an extension if you need more time to get the required documents. You will need to provide the:

• name of the power station
• reason you need an extension
• date you want to extend to.

In some cases, we may also request a longer time frame to complete the assessment.

Both parties must agree to an extension request. If the parties don't agree, we may refuse the application.

Relevant legislation: section 15A of the Act.

We'll let you know the outcome of the assessment via email.

If approved, we'll:

• give the power station a unique identification code
• assign an accreditation start date.

You can claim LGCs from the assigned accreditation start date. Your accreditation start date is the later of the:

• date of your first generation
• date your application fee is paid.

If refused, you can request to have the decision reviewed.

Relevant legislation: section 15 of the Act.