Three different kinds of organisation, routinely confused, and the distinction matters because it determines who can be trusted with what.
This page exists because the old version of our site blurred a line it should not have. Being clear about it costs us nothing and protects the thing that makes certification worth anything in the first place.
Writes the examination, sets the eligibility rules, decides who holds the credential, and can take it away. NABCEP is one. A certification body has to be independent of the organisations that train candidates for its examinations — that independence is what the credential actually means. The international standard for bodies certifying persons, ISO/IEC 17024, is substantially about exactly this: an examination whose outcome can be influenced by whoever sold the training is not a certification, it is a receipt.
Teaches the material. That is all. It does not set the examination, does not score it, and does not decide who is eligible. Solar Canada is a registered training provider, number PVARTP-0877, and that is the whole of what the registration means. It is an authorisation to teach, listed in NABCEP's own provider directory.
Administers the sitting properly: the right room or the right remote proctoring, the identification check, the chain of custody. We do this too. It buys a candidate a seat. It does not buy an advantage in the seat, and a provider implying otherwise is misrepresenting what the authorisation is.
Solar Canada issues no certification. We do not write the NABCEP examination, we do not score it, we do not set its eligibility rules and we cannot influence its result. NABCEP does all of that, and NABCEP is wholly independent of us.
Here is the part most training providers in our position would leave out. Solar Canada is a registered trade name of Canadian Board Of Certified Energy Practitioners Inc., and that corporation does operate a certification board — CABCEP. So we cannot tell you the corporation behind this school has nothing to do with certification, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What we can tell you is the thing that actually protects you, and it is a hard limit rather than a promise of good behaviour: CABCEP operates no solar certification scheme, has none in development, and will not create one. In photovoltaics this corporation is a training provider and nothing else. The credential you earn here is issued by NABCEP, on an examination written and scored by NABCEP, under eligibility rules set by NABCEP. Nobody certifies you through us, and nobody connected to us certifies you either. That commitment is published on the board's own impartiality policy, where it is harder to walk away from quietly.
The general advice still stands, including against us: be suspicious of any trainer that offers to sell you both the preparation and the certificate. Ask who issues the credential, ask whether they are independent of the people teaching you, and check the answer with the issuing body rather than the school.
Because the question "who certifies you?" is the right question to ask a training provider, and most of them answer it with marketing. The honest answer here is: nobody certifies you through us. NABCEP certifies you, on an examination it writes and scores, and our only role is teaching you beforehand and running the room on the day.
Our examination seats are priced and scheduled identically for candidates who trained with us and candidates who did not, and we do not ask on the booking form where you studied. That is not generosity. It is the minimum condition for a training provider to be allowed anywhere near an examination.
What NABCEP is and where it fits in Canada →
Our provider status, in detail →
No. We teach and we administer examinations. NABCEP issues the credential, on an examination it writes and scores.
No, and we would not be allowed to say otherwise. It gets you the material in the right order with somebody to ask. That is the whole of the benefit.
We are a NABCEP Registered Provider, number PVARTP-0877. That is an authorisation to teach and to administer examinations. It is not the same thing as being an accredited certification body, and we do not describe ourselves as one.
The body that operates it. A training provider is the wrong source for rules it does not set.
Related
Enrol
No consultation call, no quote, no sales sequence. The prices are on the site and the seats are on the calendar.
