VEU vs ESS vs STC: Complete Guide for Installers
Three schemes. Three sets of paperwork. Three portals to log into — and that’s before you’ve even picked up a tool.
If you’re an installer working across Victoria, New South Wales, or anywhere solar and heat pump jobs take you, navigating Australia’s overlapping energy incentive landscape can feel like a part-time admin job. The Victorian Energy Upgrades (VEU) program, the NSW Energy Savings Scheme (ESS), and the federal Small-scale Technology Certificates (STC) scheme all exist to incentivise energy efficiency — but they operate under different regulators, different rules, and different compliance obligations.
This guide cuts through the noise. We’ll explain exactly how each scheme works, what’s expected of you as an installer, where the key differences lie, and why an increasing number of trade businesses are choosing to manage all three through a single accredited aggregator like Glowgreen — instead of juggling it themselves.
Whether you’re new to rebate programs or you’ve been doing this for years and want to tighten up your process, this is the only guide you’ll need in 2025.
What is the VEU Scheme? (Victorian Energy Upgrades)
The Victorian Energy Upgrades (VEU) program is administered by the Essential Services Commission (ESC) of Victoria. It’s one of Australia’s most mature and high-volume energy efficiency programs, having delivered millions of upgrades across the state since 2009.
How it works ?
The scheme works on a certificate-based model. When an eligible upgrade is installed — a reverse-cycle air conditioner replacing a gas heater, for example — Victorian Energy Efficiency Certificates (VEECs) are created to represent the lifetime energy savings that upgrade is expected to deliver. These certificates are then surrendered to energy retailers, who are legally obligated to acquit a set number of VEECs each year under their scheme obligations.
As an installer, you don’t typically hold VEECs yourself. Instead, you partner with an Approved Person (AP) or aggregator who is registered with the ESC to create and trade certificates. The value of those certificates flows back to the customer as an upfront discount — which is how most VEU jobs are structured — or in some commercial arrangements, back to the installer.
What products are eligible under VEU?
The ESC maintains an approved products list that is updated regularly. As of 2025, common eligible activities include:
High-efficiency reverse-cycle air conditioners (replacing gas or inefficient electric)
Heat pump hot water systems (replacing electric resistance or gas storage)
Efficient gas space heaters in certain circumstances
LED lighting upgrades in commercial and industrial premises
Insulation installations
Refrigeration upgrades for commercial sites
Each activity has a prescribed methodology that determines how many VEECs are generated. Zone (climate region), product efficiency rating, and replacement type all affect the certificate count.
What does registration involve?
To work on VEU jobs, you must be an Approved Installer under a registered Approved Person. You don’t register directly with the ESC yourself in most cases — you operate under the AP’s umbrella. However, you are still expected to:
Hold the relevant trade licence for the work being performed
Complete any required VEU installer training
Follow installation and evidence requirements precisely (photos, serial numbers, customer declarations)
Understand your obligations if an installation is audited
Failing to meet these standards doesn’t just put one job at risk — it can trigger a review of your entire installation history under a given AP’s registration.
Payment and cash flow under VEU
One of VEU’s practical advantages is the point-of-installation discount model. Because the customer receives the benefit upfront (as a reduced purchase price), the installer or their trade business effectively receives the rebate value through the AP — typically within 30 to 60 days of certificate lodgement, depending on the aggregator’s settlement terms.
What is the ESS? (Energy Savings Scheme, NSW)
The Energy Savings Scheme (ESS) is New South Wales’s equivalent to VEU — a state-level mandatory scheme that requires electricity retailers to meet annual energy savings targets by surrendering Energy Saving Certificates (ESCs).
The ESS is administered by the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) and the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART).
How ESS certificates are created?
Unlike VEU, where the Approved Person structure sits between the installer and the regulator, the ESS operates through Accredited Certificate Providers (ACPs). An ACP is a business that has been formally accredited by IPART to calculate, create, and register ESCs for eligible activities.
As a trade installer in NSW, you are not an ACP yourself — you work under one. The ACP takes on the compliance and certification obligations. Your role is to perform the physical installation correctly, provide the required evidence, and ensure customer declarations are completed accurately.
Eligible activities under the ESS
The scheme covers a broad range of activities across residential, commercial, and industrial sectors:
Air conditioner upgrades (installation of high-efficiency units replacing less efficient models)
Heat pump hot water systems
Commercial lighting upgrades
Motor and drive efficiency upgrades (commercial/industrial)
Refrigeration upgrades
Shower rose replacements (residential)
Each activity type is governed by a specific Recognised Energy Saving Activity (RESA) methodology, which prescribes the measurement approach and evidence requirements.
Key compliance differences from VEU
A few things stand out when comparing the ESS to VEU from an installer’s perspective:
Evidence standards are strict. IPART audits are rigorous. You’ll need before-and-after photos, model and serial number records, customer signatures, and in some cases site measurements. Documentation gaps can result in certificate rejection or deregistration of the ACP.
The ACP bears primary compliance risk — but an installer whose poor documentation triggers an ACP audit has, practically speaking, damaged that commercial relationship and may find themselves removed from that ACP’s installer network.
Certificate prices fluctuate. Unlike STCs which have a relatively stable spot market, ESC prices can vary more significantly, which means the rebate value passed to customers (or the commercial return to the installer) can shift quarter to quarter.
What Are STCs? (Small-scale Technology Certificates)
Small-scale Technology Certificates (STCs) are a federal scheme sitting under the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES), administered by the Clean Energy Regulator (CER). Unlike VEU and ESS, which are state-level schemes focused on energy efficiency broadly, STCs are specifically tied to renewable energy installations.
What creates STCs?
STCs are generated by:
Solar PV systems (up to 100 kW)
Solar water heaters
Air source heat pump hot water systems
The number of STCs a system creates depends on three variables: the size of the system, the STC zone the installation is located in (zones 1–4, reflecting solar intensity by geography), and the deeming period — the number of years of future renewable generation being accounted for upfront.
The deeming period reduces by one year on 1 January each year until the scheme closes at the end of 2030. This means the STC value of a given system installation is marginally lower each year, creating a slow but meaningful pricing pressure
How installers handle STCs: assignment vs self-registration?
Installers have two options when it comes to STCs:
1. Assign them to an agent (most common) The system owner assigns the right to create STCs to an STC agent or aggregator. The agent creates the certificates, sells them on the STC market or into the clearing house, and passes the value back as a point-of-sale discount for the customer. The installer facilitates this by ensuring the assignment form is completed correctly at the time of installation.
2. Self-register The installer (or their company) registers the STCs themselves through the Clean Energy Regulator’s REC Registry, sells them on the open market or into the clearing house, and keeps the proceeds. This offers potentially higher returns if STC prices are above the clearing house price — but it requires active registry management, trading accounts, and market timing.
For most installers, especially those doing volume work, assignment to an aggregator is the practical choice. It removes the administrative overhead and provides certainty on payment timing.
STC pricing in 2025
The STC clearing house price is set at $40 per certificate. Spot market prices can trade above this, but for most commercial STC transactions, the clearing house provides the baseline. Certificate values per job vary significantly — a 10 kW solar system in Brisbane (Zone 1) creates substantially more STCs than the same system in Hobart (Zone 4).
Can installers work across multiple schemes simultaneously?
Yes — and many do. An air conditioning or heat pump installer in Victoria, for example, may be generating VEECs under VEU and STCs under SRES on the same job. A hot water installer in NSW may create ESCs and STCs for the same installation.
The critical thing to understand is that each scheme has its own registration requirements, evidence standards, and compliance framework. Running across multiple schemes means maintaining compliance with each of them independently — unless you have a single partner managing that on your behalf.
Which scheme pays the most per job?
This depends heavily on the product, location, and current certificate prices. As a rough guide:
High-efficiency HVAC in Victoria — VEU typically generates strong VEEC volumes, especially for large-capacity replacements. A 6 kW reverse-cycle replacing a gas ducted system can generate several hundred dollars of VEEC value.
Heat pump hot water in NSW — ESS and STC certificates can stack on the same installation, making these jobs particularly valuable from a rebate perspective.
Solar PV nationally — STC value per job scales with system size and zone. A 6.6 kW system in Queensland generates significantly more STC value than the same system in Tasmania.
Stacking multiple schemes on one eligible job — where permitted — is where the most value is captured.
The Real Challenge: Managing Multiple Schemes as a Single Installer
The schemes themselves aren’t the problem. The problem is what happens when you’re trying to run a real trade business — quoting, scheduling, managing staff, keeping customers happy — while simultaneously maintaining compliance across three separate regulatory frameworks.
Here’s what that actually looks like in practice.
Three portals. Three reporting cycles. Three sets of audit risk.
VEU compliance is managed through the ESC’s portal. ESS certificates are lodged through IPART’s certificate registry. STCs go through the Clean Energy Regulator’s REC Registry. Each has its own login, its own data format requirements, its own evidence standards, and its own audit processes.
When you’re doing 15 to 20 jobs a week, the documentation burden compounds quickly. One missed serial number, one unsigned customer declaration, one photo that doesn’t meet the required standard — and you’re chasing paperwork weeks after a job is closed.
Cash flow uncertainty
The three schemes settle on different timelines. STC assignment to an agent typically settles fastest — many aggregators pay within 10 to 15 business days of job submission. VEU can take 30 to 60 days depending on the AP. ESC creation and trading under the ESS can have longer and more variable timelines, particularly if certificate prices are being held pending a better market rate.
For a trade business managing wages, materials, and overheads, inconsistent settlement windows create genuine cash flow pressure.
Registration lag
Getting set up under a new AP or ACP takes time. Installer training, documentation checks, registration processing — it’s not uncommon for this to take two to six weeks. If you expand into a new state or add a new product category, you may find yourself sitting on eligible jobs you can’t yet process.
Audit exposure across your portfolio
This is the risk most installers underestimate. Under VEU, a pattern of non-compliant installations doesn’t just invalidate the affected jobs — it can trigger a retrospective audit of your full installation history under that AP. Under the ESS, an ACP whose documentation is found to be systematically deficient faces deregistration, and every installer in their network is exposed.
The practical implication: your compliance is only as strong as your weakest job. Volume doesn’t protect you — it increases your exposure if standards slip.
The multi-scheme job problem
What happens when a job is eligible under both VEU and the STC scheme? Or under ESS and STCs? You need to understand which scheme takes precedence, whether you can stack both, what the combined evidence requirements are, and how to correctly process the job so you’re not inadvertently breaching either scheme’s rules.
This is not a hypothetical. Heat pump hot water installers in Victoria face this on virtually every job.
Why Partnering with One Aggregator Simplifies Everything ?
An aggregator is a business that is accredited across multiple energy schemes — holding the Approved Person status under VEU, ACP accreditation under the ESS, and STC agent registration — and that manages the compliance, certificate creation, and trading functions on behalf of the installers in their network.
Partnering with one aggregator doesn’t mean losing control of your business. It means removing the compliance and administrative overhead from your plate so you can focus on what you actually get paid to do: the installation.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
What does an aggregator actually do for you?
When you partner with an aggregator like Glowgreen, the workflow changes substantially:
You complete the job — install the product, take the required photos, collect the customer declaration.
You submit the job — through a single portal (not three separate ones), with one standardised evidence checklist.
Glowgreen handles the rest — certificate creation across whichever schemes apply to that job, compliance checks, lodgement, trading, and payment.
You don’t need to understand the intricacies of VEEC creation methodologies or ESC certificate trading. You don’t need separate portal accounts. You don’t need to track multiple settlement windows.
How Glowgreen handles VEU, ESS, and STCs under one roof ?
Glowgreen is accredited across all three major programs. When you submit a job, our compliance team identifies which schemes apply, processes the certificates accordingly, and settles payment on a consolidated basis.
For an installer doing heat pump hot water jobs in Victoria — where VEU and STC stacking is common — this means you’re not managing two separate submission processes for the same installation. One submission. Both schemes handled.
For an installer working across state lines — VIC and NSW, for example — you’re not re-registering with multiple APs and ACPs. One aggregator relationship covers both jurisdictions.
How fast do you get paid ?
Glowgreen operates on a rapid settlement model, with most jobs paid within 10 to 15 business days of a compliant job submission. We don’t hold certificates waiting for market timing — our priority is predictable, fast payment for our installer network.
This matters for your cash flow more than most installers realise. When you know exactly when you’ll be paid for a job, you can plan your forward pipeline with confidence.
What support do you get during audits ?
This is where the aggregator relationship pays for itself.
If a VEU or ESS audit is triggered — whether a routine sample or a targeted review — Glowgreen’s compliance team manages the response. We hold the evidence packages, we understand what the regulator is looking for, and we work through the audit process with you rather than leaving you to handle it alone.
Installers who self-lodge or work with less experienced APs often discover the hard way that an audit response is a specialised skill. Getting it wrong doesn’t just cost you the revenue from the audited jobs — it can put your future participation in a scheme at risk.
Do you lose control of your jobs?
No. You remain the licenced tradesperson responsible for the physical installation. You set your own pricing. You manage your own customer relationships. You choose which jobs to submit and when.
What you’re outsourcing is the administrative and compliance layer — not your business.
What does onboarding with Glowgreen look like?
Australia’s energy incentive landscape is genuinely complex. VEU, ESS, and STCs each have their own rules, their own regulators, and their own demands on your time. For installers working at volume — or working across multiple states — trying to manage this in-house is increasingly a false economy.
The installers who are growing their businesses in 2025 are doing it by focusing on the installation and outsourcing the compliance. One aggregator, one portal, one payment run. That’s the model that works.
Glowgreen works with installers across Victoria and NSW on VEU, ESS, and STC jobs — from single-trade operators through to multi-crew businesses doing 50+ jobs a week. Our job is to make the schemes invisible to you, so you can focus on what you do best.Questions? Call our installer support team or use the live chat on our website.
Author
Glowgreen Pty Ltd is an accredited Approved Person under the Victorian Energy Upgrades program, an Accredited Certificate Provider under the NSW Energy Savings Scheme, and a registered STC agent under the federal Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme. This article is intended as general guidance only. Always verify current scheme requirements with the relevant regulator before commencing work.
FAQ's
Yes. There’s no restriction on working under both schemes simultaneously. In practice, most installers work under one AP for VEU and a separate or the same ACP for ESS — unless they partner with an aggregator like Glowgreen that holds both accreditations. Working under a single aggregator is by far the simpler approach if you’re active in both Victoria and NSW.
The trade licence requirements are the same — you need the relevant electrical or plumbing licence for the work being performed in your state. What differs is the scheme-specific registration and training. Under VEU, you’ll need to complete installer training and be registered under an AP. Under the STC scheme, the main requirement is that the system is installed by a Clean Energy Council (CEC) accredited installer (for solar) or that the product meets the required standards (for heat pumps). Your aggregator will confirm exactly what’s needed for each product type.
No VEECs can be created for that installation. If you’ve already delivered an upfront discount to the customer in anticipation of VEEC revenue, you’ll be left with an irrecoverable cost. Always check the approved products list before quoting a job — or confirm with your aggregator before purchasing stock. Glowgreen’s installer portal includes a real-time product eligibility checker specifically to prevent this.
Working through an AP or aggregator, the process typically takes two to four weeks from submission of your documentation. The timeline depends on the completeness of your application and the ESC’s current processing workload. Starting your registration before you have jobs in the pipeline is strongly recommended — don’t wait until you have a customer waiting.
An Accredited Certificate Provider (ACP) is the formal ESS designation — it’s the entity accredited by IPART to create and register ESCs. An aggregator is a commercial term for a business that aggregates certificates (and installer networks) across one or more schemes. Glowgreen is both an ACP (for ESS purposes) and an Approved Person (for VEU purposes) and an STC agent — which is what allows us to offer a single-partner solution across all three programs.
Glowgreen currently operates across Victoria (VEU), New South Wales (ESS), and nationally for STCs. If you’re working in multiple states or have jobs in both VIC and NSW, we can process all of them. Contact our installer support team for any state-specific queries.
The approved product lists are updated regularly by each regulator. As a general guide: reverse-cycle air conditioners, heat pump hot water systems, and LED lighting upgrades are the most consistently eligible across all applicable schemes. Solar PV is STC-only (not covered by VEU or ESS). For a current eligibility check on a specific product or activity, use Glowgreen’s online tool or speak to our compliance team before quoting.
In many cases, yes. A heat pump hot water system installed in Victoria can generate both VEECs (under VEU) and STCs (under the federal SRES). The customer receives the combined rebate value as an upfront discount, and both certificate streams are processed separately. Your aggregator handles the apportionment. This is one of the key reasons why proper aggregator support matters — identifying and capturing all eligible certificate value on every job.
Bibliography & Official References
- Essential Services Commission Victoria (ESC). Victorian Energy Upgrades (VEU) Program Guidelines and Specifications (as at May 2025).
- Clean Energy Regulator. Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) – STC Clearing House and Deeming Period Rules (2025).