Self-registering sounds like a clear win: cut out the middleman, keep every dollar. In practice the saving is smaller than it looks and the costs are easy to underestimate.
What self-registering involves
You open a registered person account in the REC Registry, lodge each claim, answer any CER queries and keep your own audit file. You then sell the created STCs to a buyer or into the STC Clearing House. See the fee for creating STCs for the registry costs.
The saving
A trader or agent earns a margin between the price it pays you and the price it gets selling on. At a spot of roughly $38 to $40 and the clearing house ceiling at $40, that margin is typically in the range of tens of cents to a dollar or two per STC, depending on the buyer. On a 6.6 kW zone 3 system with 45 STCs, the most you can save is perhaps $45 to $90. Multiply by your annual systems to see whether it matters: 100 jobs is $4,500 to $9,000; 1,000 jobs is a different question.
What you take on
- Registry fees. One-off account fees and per-certificate creation fees above the free allowance.
- Time. Someone has to lodge and chase every claim.
- Audit risk. The CER can audit you directly. Without a compliance review on every claim, a rejected certificate is your loss.
- Cash flow. Selling into the clearing house means waiting for the buyer process, and waiting for private buyers means finding them.
- Price risk. Holding certificates exposes you to spot movement.
When it makes sense
At several hundred systems a year, with a person who knows the registry, and contracts or a sale channel for the certificates, self-registering can pay. For a crew of two or three, the time is better spent installing.
What this means for installers
Run the numbers on your own volume. Subtract the fees, count the hours at your own hourly rate, and add a buffer for rejected claims. Then compare with a trader that publishes its rate and charges no fees. Energy Merchants does not charge fees, pre-checks every claim and settles within 24 hours for established partners; see the rate on pricing and start trading if you want to compare. See also selling your own STCs and what an STC is worth in 2026.
See the STC trading page or the FAQ for the wider picture.