June 2025
Smart energy updates & inside access to emerging opportunities
- Hot Off the Press: NSW Suspends Battery PRCs – Won’t Stack with Battery STCs!
- New VEU Registry comes online with restricted usability, reporting and bugs
- Landlords will get VEECs for doing Minimum Rental Standard Upgrades
- Metimur to Present at Aquatic Centre Electrification Forum
- Heads-Up: VEU Approval Delays for Activities 35 & 44
- No Co-Payment on Activity 44 (If Tank >700L)
- Sigenstor first V2G-Capable Charger on CEC List
- Certificate Spot Prices
Hot Off the Press: NSW Suspends Battery PRCs – Won't Stack with Battery STCs!
The NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) has suspended their battery installations PRC rebate BESS1 under the Peak Demand Reduction Scheme (PDRS).
This change comes in response to the Australian Government’s new Cheaper Home Batteries Program where a new battery STC rebate will be offered from 1 July. The federal government was making their regulation “stackable” with any existing state rebate schemes, as that would clearly supercharge the scheme even further.
However, the NSW Government has shut that door as of Monday, 10 June, opting not to align the state’s battery incentives with the federal initiative—contrary to market expectations.
As no installer will now go for BESS1 PRCs instead of Battery STCs, the PRC supply will be slashed, and the market reacted immediately, adding 30% to the spot price, and the PRC price has kept rising today, see market report below.
On the Flip Side: BESS2 Incentives for VPP Participation Are Increasing
While BESS1 has been suspended, NSW’s BESS2 rebate—which rewards batteries connected to a Virtual Power Plant (VPP)—is set to increase significantly from Tuesday, 1 July 2025.
This change will nearly double the upfront incentive for eligible battery owners.
For example, the payment for a 27 kWh battery will increase from around $800 to approximately $1,500 when connected to an approved VPP.
Additional Update:
NSW is now also working to ban door-knocking campaigns that promote and sell energy-efficient upgrades and demand reduction upgrades under both the PDRS and the Energy Savings Scheme (ESS).
This aligns NSW with Victoria’s VEU program, which introduced a similar ban mid 2024. The NSW ban is expected to take effect from August 2025
New VEU Registry comes online with restricted usability, reporting and bugs
As reported by Core Market on Thursday 6 June on the new VEU registry that came online on 3 June after a ten day blackout of all VEEC activities as the old registry data migrated to the new Salesforce system:
“The release of the new registry has presented some challenges that appear to be distracting participants and undermining confidence in the market.
Aside from usability issues for account holders, the market is confronted with a more significant problem. In its current form, the new registry lacks the most basic and essential provision of supply-side information.
Via the old registry, anyone could look up the weekly registration or submission data, while also being able to see a breakdown of creation methodologies and activity dates. This information is not currently available via the new registry.
This data was essential for the market to derive important signals on fundamentals and is universally relied on by participants on both sides of the market to make key decisions.
The Essential Services Commission has said it will manually provide some information to those who request it — presumably as a stop-gap measure until the registry can be upgraded to return the previously available information.
In the interim, many participants have expressed concerns about the market now ‘flying blind’ at a pivotal moment, when the weekly figures have been more closely observed than ever before.
Whilst many understand that teething problems occur with technological change — and that some of the burden falls on users adapting to a new system — the same question keeps coming up:
“How on earth was it deemed acceptable to transition to a new system that didn’t have this fundamental information available from the get-go?”
A number of visibility and usability issues also exists for us APs trying to operate within the new registry, which has transitioned from Excel batch uploads to API submissions via our compliance software. It is now very difficult to track what has been approved and subsequently registered, as they have removed all in portal report downloads, substituted by a weekly report. In addition, many of the notification emails previously sent to all VEU staff are either no longer being sent at all, or are only going to a seemingly random single user. Lots of room for improvement clearly, which we are promised is coming.
Landlords Get VEEC Access Under Rental Law Changes
Regulation has passed parliament that enables DEECA to offer VEECs to all landlords upgrading to meet the new minimal rental standards to come into force later in the year. Expect DEECA to announce shortly that all landlords will be eligible, not only covering vulnerable or low-income tenants.
The amendment made to the VEET Act:
“Enabling targeted discounts to be provided to vulnerable or low-income consumers and discounts to be provides where upgrades are required under other laws.”
Please review the program update for further information.
Metimur to Present at Aquatic Electrification Forum
We’re back in the spotlight: Metimur’s GM, Nicklas Lindewald, is speaking at the Negawatts Aquatic Centre forum.
- Topic: Unlocking M&V rebates (including PBA VEECs) to boost project business cases.
- Audience: Councils with Aquatic Centres aiming to electrify and move off gas.
Catch the discussion on LinkedIn here, and if you want to attend, don’t miss your chance to book tickets here.
Heads-Up: VEU Approval Delays for Activities 35 & 44
The VEU program is delaying approvals for Activities 35 and 44 due to suspected activities relating to :
- Baseline manipulation – making up evidence for what was decommissioned
- Non-compliant lead generation – no door knocking or cold calling also to business clients!
- Co-payment breaches – not charging the recently introduced minimum co-contributions
This has led to Activity 35 now taking 6-7 weeks for approval, which is 1-2 weeks longer than before, while activity 1, 3, 6 and 34 are getting through in record time, often less than a week, after the invoice payment been registered, which now often is the longest holdup.
This emphasises the need to keep airtight records on how each leads was generated — proving that no cold-calling or door-knocking without prior consent took place.
Need help? We’ve created a Lead Gen Signoff Template you can send clients that we would then submit to VEU if project is audited. Please contact Nicklas if you would like our template.
No Co-Payment on Activity 44 if Tank >700L
Confirmed by VEU: zero co-payment needed under Activity 44 if your system has an insulated storage volume above 700 litres. If 700 litres or less the minimum co-contribution is still $200.
Sigenstor first V2G-Capable Charger on CEC List
What’s New: Sigenstor by Sigenergy is currently the only charger manufacturer with a suite of V2G-capable products approved by the Clean Energy Council (CEC) in Australia.
Why It Matters: V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) technology allows EVs to not just draw power from the grid, but send it back — unlocking potential for:
- Grid support during peak demand
- Energy bill savings for EV owners
- Greater renewable energy integration
Challenges: Because these are third-party chargers, compatibility testing is required:
- Per EV model
- Per local DNSP (electricity network)
Sigenergy has already achieved this integration in NSW, calling it a “landmark” step for the tech’s rollout.
For more information see the Driven article
Certificate spot prices update
Here are the CORE markets spot price graphs from today 11 June, with some quick comments on the recent developments:
- VIC VEECs the spot price slide ended with the VEU registry blackout from 23 May when no trades could be executed until New registry was launched with very limited visibility for the market, as reported above, on 3 June.
- NSW ESC finally it appears the ESC spot price has broken away from the ~$15 doldrums and the supply restrictions that is expected from turning off commercial lighting end of the year is finally starting to bite:
- NSW PRC in addition to our reported on BESS1 above, here is what our friends at CORE market reported this morning:
“It was a landmark day for the PRC market on Tuesday, following a major policy announcement from the NSW Department that took nearly all market participants by surprise.
After weeks of softening prices — driven by widespread expectations that PRCs would soon be eligible to stack with the new Commonwealth battery rebate — the Department instead announced the suspension of BESS1 PRC creation from 1 July. The decision eliminates what was widely regarded as the only meaningful supply pathway moving forward and stunned the market. The reaction was swift and decisive, with prices surging by over 30%, and very large volumes trading in the $2.50–$2.60 range.
The rationale behind the reversal appears linked to timing pressure around the 1 July federal rebate start, combined with a lack of sufficient guardrails on battery product eligibility. While the decision may not be final — with the Department committing to a public consultation process — it marks a significant shift for a market many had positioned to supply long-term. The paper also flagged plans to boost BESS2/VPP creation, allowing 6 years’ worth of credits to be claimed upfront in an effort to bolster uptake.” At publication the last PRC spot trade had gone up further to $2.80.
A reminder that we have our filterable table of all the rebate activities we can assist with across the country, from Solar VEECs and Solar VIC to NSW PRC, ESCs and federal STCs and we try to keep it up date as new activities are announced while others expire:
Please let us know if you notice any rebates missing from the table.
Stay Connected! For more information and updates, visit our website or contact us at info@metimur.com.
View our past newsletters here: https://metimurenergy.com.au/news/
Thank you for being a part of the Metimur community. Taking the pain out of certificate creation and maximising returns!
Best Regards,
The Metimur Team
