CEC Accreditation Renewal: CPD Points, Deadlines and Lapses

Accreditation lapses are rarely a skills problem. In two decades around this trade I have never seen a good installer lose their ticket because they did not know how to wire a string. I have seen plenty lose it, or come within a week of losing it, because the renewal date was in someone’s head, the CPD certificates were in three different inboxes, and the certificate of currency for insurance had quietly expired a month earlier.

That is an admin failure, and it is an expensive one. When an accredited installer lapses, the jobs they sign off stop being safe for STC creation. Your cashflow on every one of those jobs is suddenly at risk.

The official material on this is accurate but dense. The CEC’s CPD page and framework PDF tell you what the program is for; they do not hand you a timeline. So here is the practical version: what CPD is, what to verify, when to do what, and what to do if it has already gone wrong. Where a number is not published, I will say so rather than guess.

First, clear up who actually accredits you

Most people in the trade still say “CEC accreditation”. The reality has shifted. Installer and designer accreditation moved from the Clean Energy Council to Solar Accreditation Australia (SAA, n.d.-a) in May 2024. For installs from that point, the Clean Energy Regulator expects SAA accreditation details on the STC claim, and older CEC numbers are not what it looks for on new jobs (Clean Energy Regulator, n.d.-a).

The Clean Energy Council has not vanished from the picture. It still runs and lists continuing professional development courses for solar installers (Clean Energy Council, n.d.-a). So in practice you often earn CPD points through CEC-listed training and maintain your accreditation with SAA.

Why does this matter for renewal? Because the first failure I see is people checking the wrong website, reading an out-of-date rule, and planning their year around it. Bookmark SAA’s accreditation pages as your source of truth for requirements, and the CEC’s CPD page as one of your places to find courses.

What the CPD framework is actually for

Strip away the compliance language and the CEC’s CPD framework (Clean Energy Council, n.d.-b) is doing a simple job. Standards change, products change, and network rules change. CPD is the mechanism that forces accredited people to keep up rather than coasting on what they learned when they first got their ticket.

The framework sets out the program’s goals and how courses are structured and approved, so that a CPD point means roughly the same thing regardless of who delivers the training. It is written largely for training providers seeking course approval, which is why installers find it heavy going.

I have watched panels go from 165W to well over 600W, and I have watched the install and inverter standards get rewritten more than once along the way. Every one of those shifts is a reason CPD exists. The recent AS/NZS 4777.1:2024 change is a good example: SAA required existing accreditation holders to complete an Essential Learning Module on the new standard by 30 September 2025 (Solar Accreditation Australia, n.d.-b). That is CPD with a hard deadline attached.

How many CPD points do you need?

This is the question every competitor article dodges, so let me be straight about what I can and cannot confirm.

My research notes on SAA’s accreditation requirements point to a minimum of 100 CPD points per 12-month period for accredited installers (Solar Accreditation Australia, n.d.-a). I would treat that as the working figure, and I would confirm it on SAA’s page before you plan your year, because points rules get revised.

What I could not find published is a clean breakdown of points by accreditation category (grid-connect install, design, battery and so on) that would let me say “category X needs exactly Y points”. If you hold multiple categories, do not assume one bucket of points covers everything. Check with SAA, and if you are booking CEC-listed courses, check with the CEC how each course’s points are allocated.

Two things I would plan around regardless of the exact number:

• Mandatory modules sit outside your point total. The 4777.1 Essential Learning Module was compulsory for existing holders regardless of how many other points you had banked. Expect more of these as standards change.
• Points earned late do not count early. If your CPD period closes before you finish the course, you have not met the requirement, even if you finish it the following week.

The SurgePV guide is a useful broad overview of accreditation, training and costs, and it is worth a read if you are new to the process (SurgePV, 2026). For the points rule itself, go to the accrediting body.

A renewal timeline you can actually follow

Here is the plan I would run for every accredited person in a solar business, whether they are an employee or a subbie whose accreditation you rely on. Work backwards from the expiry date.

Twelve months out: set up the year

• Record the expiry date somewhere that is not a single person’s memory.
• Confirm the current points requirement and any mandatory modules on SAA’s site.
• Book the first CPD activity in the first quarter, not the last. Courses fill up near deadlines.

Six months out: check progress

• Count points actually completed, with certificates in hand, not “enrolled”.
• Check the public liability insurance expiry date. Insurance and accreditation renewals rarely line up, and the one you forget is the one that bites.
• Check electrical licence expiry for the same person.

Three months out: close the gap

• Finish any outstanding CPD. Leave a margin for a course being cancelled.
• Gather certificates of completion into one folder per person.
• Confirm current certificate of currency for insurance is on file.

Six to eight weeks out: lodge

• Lodge the renewal with SAA with everything attached.
• Do not wait for the final week. If something is rejected or missing, you need time to fix it before the expiry date passes.

On approval: verify, then update

• Check the person’s status on SAA’s accreditation status check (Solar Accreditation Australia, n.d.-c).
• Update the new expiry date in your records and reset the cycle.

What evidence to keep

Keep CPD completion certificates, renewal confirmation, insurance certificates of currency and licence copies for each accredited person. The CER can audit STC claims for years after creation, and my working assumption is that you should be able to prove accreditation was current on any given install date for at least five years. A clean audit trail is boring right up until the day someone asks for it.

Deadlines, grace periods and what a lapse actually does

I could not find a published grace period in the CEC CPD framework or on SAA’s public pages. Assume there is none. Plan as if accreditation stops at midnight on the expiry date, because for your STC claims it effectively does.

The Clean Energy Regulator is clear that for a small-scale system to create STCs, it must be designed and installed by an appropriately accredited person (Clean Energy Regulator, n.d.-b). Accreditation has to be current on the installation date.

Quick reminder for anyone newer to the business side: STCs are not a rebate. They are tradeable certificates created from a system’s deemed generation, bought and surrendered by liable entities under the Renewable Energy Target. The customer assigns their right to create them to you in exchange for a discount on the price. I have written more on that in why STCs are not a rebate.

So when accreditation lapses, here is the practical damage:

• Claims fail. Jobs signed off after expiry can be rejected when you try to create the certificates.
• Clawbacks happen later. If a claim gets through and is audited, the certificates can be pulled back, after you have already passed the discount on to the customer.
• Your schedule seizes up. Every booked job that person was meant to sign off has to be reassigned or postponed.
• Cash stalls. The value of those certificates is working capital you already spent on stock and labour. I covered that squeeze in the STC lodgement cashflow gap.

A lapse on one installer is a bad week. A lapse on your only accredited designer can stall the whole business.

Why installers get flagged as non-compliant

The same handful of failures turn up again and again. None of them are technical.

Missed CPD

Usually caused by leaving every course to the last quarter, then losing a week to wet weather or a cancelled session. Fix: book early, and track completed points, not enrolments.

Expired insurance

Public liability lapses are common because the policy renews on a different date to accreditation, often through a broker who emails one person who has since left. Fix: record every certificate of currency with its expiry date. I go deeper on what cover is expected in CEC solar installer public liability insurance.

Incomplete records

The installer did the work and earned the points, but nobody can find the certificate. Or the install photos are missing metadata. Fix: one folder per person for accreditation evidence, and a disciplined photo process on every job. If you lean on subbies, the same rules apply to them; see solar subcontractor management.

Assuming a subbie is current

You booked them last year and they were accredited then. That tells you nothing about today. Fix: check SAA’s status tool before every engagement, not once.

How to reinstate a lapsed accreditation

If it has already gone, move fast and in this order.

1. Stop scheduling sign-offs for that person immediately. Reassign booked jobs to someone who is current, or postpone them. Do not let anyone “just finish this one”.
2. List every job installed after the expiry date. Those are your exposure. Hold any unlodged STC claims for them until you understand the position.
3. Contact SAA directly. Ask what reinstatement requires in your specific case. I am not going to guess at their process; it may differ depending on how long the accreditation has been lapsed.
4. Close the CPD and evidence gap. Complete outstanding points or modules, renew insurance if that was the cause, and gather certificates.
5. Lodge, then verify. Do not resume sign-offs until the status check shows the accreditation as current.
6. Fix the system that let it happen. Otherwise you will be doing this again next year.

Batteries and other add-on categories

CPD and renewal questions get messier once you add battery work. Holding PV grid-connect accreditation does not automatically mean a person is accredited for battery installs, and an approved battery product is a separate question from an accredited installer. Check each person’s categories on SAA’s status check before scheduling battery jobs.

Battery STC claims also carry their own evidence requirements, including additional photos that the CER introduced in 2026 (Clean Energy Regulator, n.d.-a). Treat each category as its own renewal line in your tracking, not a footnote under the main one.

Stop keeping this in your head

Every lapse I have seen comes back to the same root cause: the dates and documents lived in spreadsheets, inboxes and someone’s memory. That works with one installer. It falls apart at three, and it is dangerous once you are relying on subbies.

That is one of the reasons I am building CurrentFlow. It is designed to hold each installer’s accreditation expiry, insurance and licence dates and supporting documents in one place, with reminders well before renewal. The idea is that an owner sees a looming lapse months out, before it touches STC eligibility or the install schedule. It is pre-launch, so if that sounds useful, join the waitlist on the site.

Whatever you use, the rule is the same: write down every expiry date, check it quarterly, and lodge early.

References

Clean Energy Council. (n.d.-a). Continuous professional development (CPD) for solar installers. https://cleanenergycouncil.org.au/education-at-cec/continuing-professional-development-cpd

Clean Energy Council. (n.d.-b). Continuous professional development framework [PDF]. https://assets.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/documents/accreditation/CPD-course-application/cec-cpd-framework.pdf

Clean Energy Regulator. (n.d.-a). Rooftop solar installers and designers. https://cer.gov.au/schemes/renewable-energy-target/renewable-energy-target-participants-and-industry/rooftop-solar-installers-and-designers

Clean Energy Regulator. (n.d.-b). Create small-scale technology certificates. https://cer.gov.au/schemes/renewable-energy-target/small-scale-renewable-energy-scheme/small-scale-technology-certificates/create-small-scale-technology-certificates

Solar Accreditation Australia. (n.d.-a). About accreditation. https://saaustralia.com.au/about-accreditation/

Solar Accreditation Australia. (n.d.-b). 2025 essential learning module. https://saaustralia.com.au/2025_essential_learning_module/

Solar Accreditation Australia. (n.d.-c). Check installer accreditation status. https://saaustralia.com.au/accreditation-status-check/

SurgePV. (2026). CEC accreditation for solar installers: Complete guide 2026. https://www.surgepv.com/solar-compliance/australia/guides/cec-accreditation

FAQ

Is CEC accreditation still the accreditation I renew?

Not for installer and designer accreditation. That moved to Solar Accreditation Australia in 2024, and SAA accreditation numbers are what the Clean Energy Regulator expects on new STC claims. The Clean Energy Council still runs and lists CPD courses, which is why most of the trade still says “CEC accreditation”.

How many CPD points do I need each year?

My research points to a minimum of 100 points per 12-month period under SAA’s requirements. Confirm that on SAA’s own page before planning your year, because points rules and mandatory modules change.

Is there a grace period if my accreditation expires?

I could not find a published grace period in the CEC framework or on SAA’s public pages. Assume there is none, and renew well before the date.

Can STCs be created for a job installed while accreditation had lapsed?

The Clean Energy Regulator requires the system to be designed and installed by an accredited person. If accreditation was not current on the installation date, expect the claim to fail or be clawed back on audit.

Does my solar accreditation cover batteries?

Battery work is treated separately from PV grid-connect accreditation. Check each person’s categories on SAA’s status check before scheduling battery jobs.