Eight Smart Lifestyle models were de-listed after the supplier's liquidation, and all eight are still on the approved list.
The Clean Energy Council de-listed three inverters and five batteries sold under the Smart Lifestyle brand on , six months after liquidators were appointed to the supplier. The products had been suspended since 17 June. Three days on, all eight are still on the Clean Energy Regulator's approved product files, in a record that has nowhere to say so.
What the notice says
The de-listing took effect on . The Council wrote to industry that day to confirm it: "On 17 September 2026, the CEC de-listed all Smart Lifestyle Australia Pty Ltd inverter and battery models from the CEC list of approved products." It states, in its own emphasis, that the decision was not taken on the basis of a product recall or any identified product safety issue. Source: Clean Energy Council notice to industry, 17 September 2026.
The models named are the SLA-HB-S1-3.8kW1P, SLA-HB-S1-5kW1P and SLA-HB-S1-6kW1P inverters, all to AS4777-2 2020, and the SLA-ESS-S1 batteries at 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 kWh. The Council gives case reference 00041762 for the inverters and 00041763 for the batteries. Source: Clean Energy Council notice to industry, 11 September 2026.
Its published de-listings register carries the same entry, announced 11 September 2026 with a de-listing date of 17 September 2026, and gives the reason as follows: the company went into liquidation on 16 March 2026 and is no longer operating; it no longer has an active website, is no longer registered as a responsible supplier, and is uncontactable; and the products, suspended since 17 June 2026, were not the subject of a response to the Council within the required timeframe. Source: Clean Energy Council product suspensions and de-listings register, read 12 September 2026.
Someone has stepped forward, and set the limits of it
The same 17 September notice names a party the earlier ones did not. The Council states it has been in contact with Hiconics Eco-energy Drive Technology Co., Ltd, which held a co-licence with Smart Lifestyle Australia for the de-listed products, and that Hiconics has advised it of assistance on a case-by-case basis: technical support, being troubleshooting and guidance for installers or end users; repair services for units returned to Hiconics, assessed and carried out where technically feasible, at the customer's cost for parts and labour; and replacement parts, subject to availability. Source: Clean Energy Council notice to industry, 17 September 2026.
The limits are stated in the Council's own emphasis, and they matter more than the offer. The support is offered on a best-effort basis and "does not constitute a legal assumption of the original warranty obligations." Hiconics is recorded as not in a position to provide free-of-charge replacements or full warranty coverage for products sold under another brand, because it has no visibility over the installation, commissioning or usage history of those systems. A household with a Smart Lifestyle system has, on this record, a route to paid repair and to parts while they last. It does not have a warranty, and nothing in the notice says otherwise. Source: Clean Energy Council notice to industry, 17 September 2026.
This is the first named party in the sequence with any continuing relationship to the hardware, and it arrives six months after the liquidation and three months after the suspension. Read plainly, it is what a co-licence leaves behind when the licensee fails: the capacity to service a product, without the obligation to.
The Council corrects its own notice
The 17 September notice also issues a correction. The Council states that its 11 September notice "incorrectly referred to 'PV Module' in the subject line and in the opening sentence", which had given the ground as non-compliance with the Council's PV Module Terms and Conditions, and that these references should instead have been to inverters and batteries. It confirms that no PV modules were de-listed. Source: Clean Energy Council notice to industry, 17 September 2026.
When this piece was first published on 12 September it recorded that mismatch as an oddity in the source and reported the eight models as inverters and batteries regardless. The correction resolves it in the same direction. It is worth keeping in view for what it says about reading these notices: the subject line of a compliance notice is not the notice, and the models it names are.
The corporate record, read directly
The liquidation is not reported here on the listing body's account of it. ASIC Published Notices carries a notice of appointment as liquidator under paragraph 491(2)(b) of the Corporations Act 2001 for SMART LIFESTYLE AUSTRALIA LIMITED, ACN 652 113 561, status in liquidation, appointment date . The notice records that at a general meeting of members held that day it was resolved that the company be wound up and that Liam Bellamy and John Kukulovski be appointed liquidators, with the notice dated 17 March 2026. Source: ASIC Published Notices, notice of appointment as liquidator, published 17 March 2026.
A second limb of the Council's stated reason is also checkable. The company's web domain was requested on 12 September 2026 and returned a Cloudflare 522 error, meaning the origin server did not complete the request.
Six months between the corporate event and the listing consequence
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Liquidators appointedAt a general meeting of members, the company resolves to wind up and Liam Bellamy and John Kukulovski of Mackay Goodwin are appointed. ASIC publishes the notice the following day.
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Suspension announcedThe Clean Energy Council announces the suspension of three inverter models and five battery models, giving the liquidation, the absent website, the lapsed responsible supplier registration and the company being uncontactable as its reasons.
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Suspension takes effectThe same date now appears as the expiry date against all eight models in the Clean Energy Regulator's approved product files.
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De-listing announcedThe Council notifies industry that it intends to de-list the eight models, stating that the company did not respond within the required timeframe.
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De-listing takes effectThe Council confirms to industry that it has de-listed all Smart Lifestyle inverter and battery models, corrects its own 11 September notice, and sets out the support the products' co-licensor has offered.
The list still carries all eight
The Clean Energy Regulator publishes the approved product files that determine whether a new installation can claim small-scale technology certificates. When this piece was first published, both files were the 6 September 2026 vintage, the inverter file carrying 4,739 rows and the battery file 3,605. Both were re-read on , three days after the de-listing.
The inverter file has been republished since, and is now last modified 11 September 2026 with 4,759 rows. All three SLA-HB-S1 inverters are still in it, each with a CEC approved date of 9 August 2024 and an expiry date of 17 June 2026. The battery file is last modified 15 September 2026, with 3,605 rows, and all five SLA-ESS-S1 batteries are still in it, each approved 22 October 2024 and expiring 17 June 2026. Source: Clean Energy Regulator, CEC approved inverters, last modified 11 September 2026, and CEC approved solar batteries, last modified 15 September 2026, both retrieved and parsed 20 September 2026.
One qualification travels with that, and it is the reason this is not yet the answer. Neither vintage post-dates the de-listing. The inverter file was published six days before it and the battery file two days before it. What the re-read establishes is that three days after a de-listing took effect, the Regulator had not published a file that could reflect it. Whether the rows then survive a file that does is still open, and still worth measuring.
The register records the action. The approved list records an expiry date.
The Council's suspensions table carries the entry with a suspension date of 17 June 2026 and no date lifted. Its de-listings table carries the entry announced 11 September 2026 with a de-listing date of 17 September 2026.
Re-read on 20 September, three days after the de-listing. The inverter file, now last modified 11 September, carries all three SLA-HB-S1 models; the battery file, last modified 15 September, carries all five SLA-ESS-S1 models. Each row still shows an expiry date of 17 June 2026. Neither file has a status column, and neither vintage post-dates the de-listing.
The battery file's columns are the certificate holder account, brand, series, model, nominal capacity, usable capacity, approved date and expiry date. The module file's are the licensee, model, approved date, expiry date and whether the module is fire tested. There is no field in either that records a suspension, a de-listing, or a supplier that has stopped trading. The expiry date is the only column in which any of it can show up at all.
A de-listing does not remove the row either
The natural assumption is that the rows will go on 17 September. The register's own recent history suggests otherwise. Nineteen Shanghai Electric Hency Solar module models, the SEP2 and SEP3 series, were de-listed on , on the ground that they no longer had a valid test certificate and that an updated one had not been provided within the required timeframe. All nineteen still appear in the approved PV module file last modified on 6 September 2026, each carrying an approved date of 18 March 2026 and an expiry date of 16 April 2026, which is a listed term of 29 days. Sources: Clean Energy Council product suspensions and de-listings register, read 12 September 2026; Clean Energy Regulator, CEC approved PV modules, read 12 September 2026.
The same manufacturer's 20 newly approved SETS210 models sit in the same file with an approved date of 31 August 2026 and an expiry date of 31 August 2029, a three-year term. A suspension or de-listing binds named models, not a manufacturer, and the file shows both states side by side under one name.
How to read a listing, then
A reader checking eligibility by asking whether a model appears on the approved list gets one answer. A reader checking the expiry date printed beside it gets another. Both fields are published, in the same row, and they are read together only by someone who already knows to look. An expired date beside a present row is ordinary in these files and usually means a certificate lapsed. Sometimes, as here, it sits against a supplier that has been in liquidation for six months.
Our Approval Watch reads these files and reports what changed between published vintages. The Council's register is the earlier source and a separate publication from the lists, and on this evidence it is also the only one of the two that states what happened. Reading the lists alone is not enough, and reading row presence alone is not enough either.
The test this piece set itself has a partial answer. On 20 September the eight rows were all still there, in files the Regulator had not republished since the de-listing. The Shanghai Electric precedent above says they may well still be there in a file that has been, since nineteen de-listed models survived one. That is the expectation, not yet the finding, and the next vintage of each file is what settles it. We will record that too.
Reported from the listing body's notice and register, the corporate record, and the Regulator's published files. review.solar scores no Smart Lifestyle product, and none is named in this piece. The Council states the de-listing was not taken on the basis of a product recall or any identified product safety issue. A listing governs certificate eligibility for a new installation on a date; it is not a finding about a product's chemistry, warranty or field performance, and a system already installed is not affected when its model leaves the list. Where a supplier is in liquidation, the separate question of who stands behind an existing warranty is a matter for the liquidators. A co-licensor has since offered technical support, paid repair and parts on a best-effort, case-by-case basis, and has stated that this is not an assumption of the original warranty obligations; that is support, and it is not a warranty.
Sources and method6 references
- Clean Energy Council, notice to industry, CEC Approved PV Module de-listing, Smart Lifestyle Australia Pty Ltd, 11 September 2026, case references 00041762 (inverter) and 00041763 (battery). Primary source for the intended de-listing, its effective date, the eight model numbers, the stated reasons, and the statement that the decision was not taken on the basis of a product recall or any identified product safety issue. Its subject line described a PV module de-listing while its content covered inverters and batteries only; the Council corrected that reference in its 17 September notice, below. No module is involved.
- Clean Energy Council, notice to industry, Update to CEC Approved Products De-listing, Smart Lifestyle Australia Pty Ltd, 17 September 2026, same case references. Primary source for three things this revision turns on: that the de-listing took effect on 17 September; the support position of Hiconics Eco-energy Drive Technology Co., Ltd, which held a co-licence for the de-listed products, quoted here for its limits as well as its offer; and the Council's correction of the "PV Module" references in its own 11 September notice.
- Clean Energy Council, product suspensions and de-listings, read 12 September 2026. Read as the public register of the same program. Its suspensions table carries the 17 June 2026 suspension with no date lifted; its de-listings table carries the 17 September 2026 de-listing, and the 17 July 2026 Shanghai Electric de-listing with its stated reason. Of the 34 entries the de-listings table currently publishes, 32 cover PV modules; the other two are an Energizer entry announced 14 April 2025 and this one.
- ASIC Published Notices, Notice of appointment as liquidator, SMART LIFESTYLE AUSTRALIA LIMITED, ACN 652 113 561, paragraph 491(2)(b) of the Corporations Act 2001, published 17 March 2026. Primary source for the liquidation, the 16 March 2026 appointment date and the appointees. Used so that the liquidation is not reported on the listing body's account alone.
- Australian Business Register, ABN Lookup, ABN 54 652 113 561, read 12 September 2026. Entity name SMART LIFESTYLE AUSTRALIA PTY LTD, ACN 652 113 561. Read to confirm that the company named in the Council's notice and the company in the ASIC notice are one entity. The two registers spell the company type differently against the same ACN, and the ACN is what ties them.
- Clean Energy Regulator, CEC approved inverters, CEC approved solar batteries and CEC approved PV modules, all last modified 6 September 2026, read and parsed 12 September 2026. Row counts 4,739, 3,605 and 4,614. Source for every approval date, expiry date and column list stated above, and for the absence of any status field.
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