A sparky gets as far as your meter box, stops, and tells you someone else has to do the next bit. Or a storm brings your service wire down. Or a new estate needs its connection before anything else on site can start. If any of that sounds familiar, you’ve run into the same wall.
You need a Level 2 electrician. They’re accredited to work on the poles, wires and connection gear between the street and your meter. That gear belongs to the network, not you, and an ordinary electrician’s licence doesn’t cover it, no matter how good they are.
Level 2 electricians hold a separate accreditation on top of their trade licence. In New South Wales, that comes from the Accredited Service Provider scheme, which is what lets a business work on the distribution network at all. We spend a fair bit of time explaining where that line falls. Here’s the short version.
The invisible line running through your property
Your home has a boundary on it called the connection point. On most Albury and Wodonga homes, it’s where the service wire from the street meets the building.
Everything on your side of it is ordinary electrical work. Switchboard, circuits, power points, lights. Any licensed electrician can do the lot.
Everything on the other side belongs to the network, and nobody touches it without written permission from Essential Energy, who run the poles and wires on the New South Wales side. Accreditation is what makes a business eligible. It’s also why your electrician stopped at the meter box, not because the job was beyond them, but because that half metre of wire wasn’t theirs to touch.
It’s also worth knowing where the line leaves you. Past the connection point, the poles and wires on your property are yours, and you look after them the same way you look after the wiring inside the house.
What we’re actually allowed to do
The scheme splits Level 2 work into four classes. Between them, they cover just about every job where the network meets a building.
- Disconnect and reconnect (2A). Shut off the supply at the connection point and reconnect it afterwards. You need this before a demolition or a re-roof.
- Underground services (2B). Running and connecting the underground service line. Most of the newer estates around Thurgoona and Baranduda are fed this way.
- Overhead services (2C). The same job, but on a pole and a span of wire, which most of the older Albury and Lavington streets still run on.
- Energising service equipment (2D). Switching the protection gear at the top of your service on and off.
We hold all four.
Level 2 is one of three. Level 1 builds the network itself: the poles, cables and substations. Level 3 designs it. We hold all three: Level 1 under accreditation 5380, Level 2 under 5354, Level 3 under 4628.
There’s a line on our Google profile that says it better than any of the above. From the power pole to the power point.
When you’ll need one
A storm takes your service wire down. Where the wire between the street and the house comes down, the repair sits on the network’s side of the boundary, so it needs Level 2 hands on it.
You’re building in a new estate. The Thurgoona growth area, Ettamogah Rise and Leneva-Baranduda are all releasing lots, and every one of those homes needs its service connection before anything else happens on site.
You’re going to three-phase. Ducted air conditioning, a workshop, a battery or a fast EV charger can push a single-phase supply past what it can carry. The upgrade runs from the street to your board with a network application behind it, and it often leaves you with no room left in the switchboard. That’s a separate job, and what a switchboard upgrade costs covers it.
Your meter box is moving. Rendering, re-cladding, or an extension over the old spot all mean the service has to be disconnected and reconnected.
You’ve got a private power pole. If you’re on acreage around Bowna, Table Top, Bethanga or Talgarno, there’s a good chance you have one. Past the connection point, it belongs to you, which makes it yours to look after: once a year, before each bushfire season, and after anything that blows through hard.
You’re disconnecting for a demolition or a big renovation. Nothing else on the site can start until the supply is off, safely and on the record.
If you’re in Wodonga, this works differently
Cross the Murray, and the term disappears.
Victoria doesn’t run a level-based scheme at all. It licenses Registered Electrical Contractors instead, and Energy Safe Victoria sets what an REC has to carry: five million dollars of public liability cover, and a registration number on everything they advertise. The network on that side is AusNet, and their instruction to homeowners is a single line. If you want a new meter installed, your electrician lodges the application for you.
So the same job, on the same street, runs through two different systems depending on which side of the river your house sits on.
This trips people up in one particular way. You’re in Wodonga, you read an article about Level 2 electricians, you go looking for one locally, you find nothing, and you decide the work can’t be done. It can be done; you’re just looking for the wrong words. What you want is a Registered Electrical Contractor who can lodge with AusNet.
How to check that someone’s the real thing
All of it is checkable, which is the useful part.
Ask which levels a business holds, and ask for the accreditation number. It’s issued to the business rather than to a person, so anyone who genuinely holds one can give you the number on the spot. Ours are further up this page.
Then ask who lodges the application with the network. Paperwork sits behind the physical work, either with Essential Energy or AusNet, and jobs sit half-finished for weeks when nobody has settled whose part it was.
One more, and it’s free. In New South Wales, whoever tests the work must lodge a Certificate of Compliance for Electrical Work within seven days, and you can request a copy. Ask for it while they’re filling it in, rather than a year later when you’re selling the house.
We hold ASP Level 1, 2 and 3, we’re licensed in both New South Wales and Victoria, and we’ve got an office at Thurgoona you can actually turn up to. Not sure which side of the meter your job falls on? Tell us what’s happening, and we’ll tell you which one it is. That part is free either way.