How to Check a Level 2 Electrician Is Actually Accredited

Anyone can put "Level 2 ASP" on a van and a website. The accreditation behind it is a matter of public record, which means you do not have to take it on trust. This is how to check, in the order worth checking it.

It is also worth knowing what the words mean, because two of the most common phrases in this trade are used wrongly often enough that they are a useful filter on their own.

First: are you sure you need a Level 2 at all?

Start here, because it can save you the whole exercise.

A licensed electrician does everything on your side of the main switch: circuits, power points, lighting, and switchboard work that does not alter the supply.

A Level 2 ASP can additionally work on the connection between the distribution network and your property. Service lines, the point of attachment, consumer mains, metering, disconnections and reconnections, private poles, and defect rectification where it involves the service or the metering.

Replacing a switchboard on an existing, unchanged supply is ordinary electrician work. It becomes Level 2 work when the mains, the metering or the supply capacity change, or when the supply has to be disconnected at the network side to do it. If you are not sure which yours is, that distinction is worth reading properly before you start ringing around.

The accreditation is a published list

This is the part most people do not know, and it is the single most useful thing in this article.

Level 2 Accredited Service Providers are accredited under the NSW Government's ASP Scheme, and the list of accredited providers, with their gradings, is published on the NSW Government energy website. It is a public document. You can open it and look for the name.

Two things to check on it:

1. The business name on the list matches the business quoting you. Not a similar name, not a related name. Subcontracting arrangements are legitimate and common, but you should know whether the accredited entity is the one you are contracting with.
2. The grading. ASPs carry a grading, and it is listed alongside the name.

If a provider cannot be found on that list under any name they trade as, stop.

Accreditation and authorisation are two different things

Here is the phrase filter.

Accreditation is step one: the NSW Government's scheme accredits the provider. Authorisation is step two: the local distributor then authorises individual workers to work on or near its own network. Ausgrid decides who is authorised on Ausgrid. Endeavour Energy decides who is authorised on Endeavour. Being authorised on one does not make you authorised on the other.

Which means the correct phrase is "authorised to work on the Ausgrid network".

These are wrong, and they are everywhere:

• "Ausgrid approved"
• "Ausgrid certified"
• "endorsed by Ausgrid"
• "official Endeavour Energy partner"

A distributor does not approve, endorse or partner with contractors in that sense. A business using those phrases is either careless with language or does not understand the scheme it operates in. Neither is what you want on the day the distributor asks a question about your job.

The classes explain why one Level 2 is not another

An ASP is accredited across specific classes:

This is worth knowing because it means "Level 2" is not one undifferentiated qualification. A provider set up for overhead work is not automatically the right one for an underground fault, and metering has its own class.

A fair question to ask is simply: which classes do you hold, and does my job sit inside them? Somebody who does this work every day will answer without hesitating.

The licence sits underneath it

Every Level 2 ASP must also hold a current NSW Fair Trading electrical contractor licence. The ASP accreditation sits on top of that licence, it does not replace it. NSW Fair Trading publishes a licence check.

Also, a phrase that is not a thing in NSW: "master electrician". It is not a licence class here. It appears in marketing copy and it means nothing about what somebody is allowed to do.

The paperwork test

This is the best single question to ask a quoting electrician, because the answer is verifiable after the fact and it cannot be faked.

"Will I get a CCEW?"

A CCEW is a Certificate of Compliance for Electrical Work. It is issued by the licensed person who did the work, it certifies that the work was tested and complies, and it must be lodged within 7 days of the safety and compliance test. From 1 July 2026 lodgement is online only, through the Building Commission NSW eCert portal. You get a copy. An unlicensed person cannot issue one.

So the certificate is not paperwork for its own sake. It is the document you hand over when you sell the property, and it is the document an insurer asks about after an incident. No CCEW means no record that the work was ever tested.

There is a second document on Level 2 jobs that almost nobody mentions. A NOSW, Notification of Service Work, goes from the ASP to the distributor for the service work they completed. A Level 2 job normally produces both. If somebody describes the paperwork as one form, they are describing half of it.

Five questions worth asking

1. Which ASP classes do you hold, and is my job inside them?
2. Which network is my address on, and have you confirmed it? Boundaries run through single streets in Sydney. An application prepared for the wrong distributor goes nowhere. The honest answer is that they will check the address, not that they already know.
3. Will I get a CCEW, and will a NOSW be lodged?
4. Does this job need a distributor outage, and who books it? On connection work the scheduling is often what sets the date, not the electrical work.
5. What is in the quote and what is excluded? On older properties the realistic answer names the things that could change the scope once the cover is off, rather than pretending none exist.

What a quote should look like

A quote for connection work should tell you what is being replaced, whether the mains and the metering are in or out of scope, whether an outage is needed, and what is specifically excluded.

Be careful with a firm price given over the phone from a photograph of a meter box. It is a guess. It will either be padded to cover what the photograph did not show, or it will move once somebody is on site. Neither helps you compare quotes.

On the other side, be equally careful with a quote that includes a full upgrade of everything. A good assessment separates what must be done from what is worth doing while access is open from what should be left alone.

Frequently asked questions

Is a Level 2 electrician more expensive than a regular one? For the same piece of work, the comparison does not really exist: if the job is on the network side, a regular electrician cannot lawfully do it and the connection will not be approved. Where the rates do differ, it reflects the accreditation, the distributor liaison and the equipment involved.

Can a Level 2 electrician do ordinary electrical work too? Yes. The accreditation is in addition to an electrical licence, not instead of it. In practice a Level 2 provider can handle both halves of a job, which is often why one is worth calling for work that straddles the boundary.

What is the difference between the distributor and my retailer? The retailer sells you electricity and sends the bill, and you can change them. The distributor owns the poles and wires, and it is fixed by your address. Connection work goes through the distributor, via an ASP. This is the most common confusion in the whole subject.

What if I already have a defect notice? Send every page of it, plus photographs of the equipment it refers to. The details section names what has been listed, and from that a provider who does this work can tell you what is involved before anyone attends. A firm price follows the inspection.

Does the distributor recommend a provider? Distributors publish the accredited providers authorised on their network; that is a list, not a recommendation. The grading on the NSW Government list is the closest thing to an objective signal available to you.

If you want to check us

We are accredited Level 2 ASPs under the NSW Government's ASP Scheme and authorised to work on the distribution network. Sydney Level 2 Electrician is a trading name of Bright Force Electrical Pty Ltd, ABN 61 651 501 227, based in Sylvania. That is the entity to look for on the list and the one named on your certificate.

Call 0485 824 714 and ask us any of the five questions above. Quotes are free, and we cover Sydney and the Blue Mountains on both the Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy networks.