There's no 77-VEEC cap. We checked all 22 mentions.

How did we check?

Saying something isn't there is harder to believe than saying it is. So here's how we checked, not just what we found.

We looked at every one of the 22 times "77" appears in the 165-page Specifications v25.0, the rulebook that sets the detail for each VEU activity. Each one turned out to be a page number, a postcode in the list of locations, a footnote marker, the National Relay Service phone number, or a number inside a greenhouse gas formula.

Not one of them is a certificate cap. Nothing in the rules limits you to 77 certificates per job, per premises or per anything else.

So where did the 77 come from?

We can't know for sure. There are two plausible stories, and the first is more likely.

In March 2026 the Essential Services Commission (ESC), the scheme's regulator, refused to register two big batches of certificates. It published how many certificates were in each batch and roughly what they were worth. Divide the value by the count and the implied market price is about $77 a certificate. A price of about $77 a VEEC is very easy to misremember as a cap of 77 VEECs.

The second is simpler. Somebody wrote it down wrong on an installer's marketing blog and it got copied. That's how a lot of wrong numbers spread in this industry, and it's why every figure on this site names its source.

So what are the real limits?

There genuinely are limits. They're just not that one.

• A 20 kW limit on the capacity input you can claim for a residential multi-split, from 30 September 2026
• Capacity input caps of 2.4 kW on Part 6 scenarios (i) and (ii), and 15 kW on (iii) and (iv). Part 6 is space heating and cooling, and those four scenarios are jobs replacing electric resistance heating
• The heads added up can't count for more than the outdoor unit's rated capacity
• Limits per address under Schedule 4. Once an address has had enough upgrades already, you can't claim there at all
• 65 kW, the most Part 6 covers at all

If somebody's telling you about a 77 certificate cap, what they've probably half-heard is one of those. The 20 kW residential multi-split cap is the new one, and it's the one that actually changes quoting.

What other number did the industry get wrong?

The co-payment date. You'll see 31 July 2026 published in several places. The real date is 30 September 2026.

It's easy to see how the mix-up happened. The v25.0 document itself started on 21 July 2026, the day it was published. But the clause that changes the co-payments says they apply from 30 September. Our best guess is someone read 21 July as 31 July and never got as far as the clause.

Anyone who repriced on 31 July did it two months early, and gave away margin on every job in between.