1.1 Current Exam Facts

Why the published numbers matter on this award

Quick Answer: The award you are studying is City & Guilds pathway 2922-34, officially titled Level 3 Award in the Installation and Maintenance of Small Solar Photovoltaic Systems. The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) number is 610/4841/0. Handbook version 1.3 (August 2025) sizes it at 22 Guided Learning Hours (GLH) and 30 Total Qualification Time (TQT). You must pass Unit 301 (online knowledge test) and Unit 302 (practical assignment). This OpenExamPrep chapter is independent study material for that pathway; it is not a City & Guilds publication.

Electricians lose weeks when they book the wrong City & Guilds number. Suite 2922 is Small Solar Photovoltaic Systems. The certificate that training centres, the Walled Garden, Joint Industry Board (JIB) records, and Electrotechnical Certification Scheme (ECS) Continuing Professional Development (CPD) entries actually use is pathway 2922-34. A neighbouring award, 2923-34 (small electrical energy storage), is a different qualification with a different Ofqual number. If your booking confirmation, invoice, or ECS upload shows 2923 when you meant 2922, stop and correct it before you sit e-volve.

City & Guilds last updated the public 2922 product page on 25 May 2026. That page is the owner source for last registration 31 December 2027 and last certification 31 December 2030. Handbook v1.3 remains the owner source for assessment rules, permitted books, learning-outcome weights, and learner-entry rules. Where a centre flyer disagrees with either document, prefer the owner source with the later applicable date for that fact.

Identity card you should be able to recite

Guided Learning Hours are the 22 hours City & Guilds assigns to teaching, supervised practice, and assessment under a tutor. Total Qualification Time adds the extra notional hours a typical learner spends in directed study outside that contact time, bringing the estimate to 30 hours. This is a short CPD award, not a three-year apprenticeship. Centres removed the old “number of days” wording in handbook v1.3; do not treat a five-day or three-day commercial course length as a City & Guilds rule.

The qualification is written as CPD for competent electricians who already meet industry entry requirements in the Electrotechnical Assessment Specification (EAS). Scope is domestic and small commercial grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) work — roof- and building-mounted arrays that export or operate in parallel with the public supply — not utility-scale farms, not standalone off-grid cabins as the main use case, and not a licence to design high-voltage networks. City & Guilds maps Units 301 and 302 to National Occupational Standards (NOS) SPV01, the occupational standard for installing and maintaining solar PV systems. NOS mapping describes the job the unit is written against; it is not a claim that OpenExamPrep, your centre, or City & Guilds is the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS).

Two mandatory units — and what the knowledge paper actually examines

To achieve the award you must complete both mandatory units:

1. 301 — Installation and maintenance of small solar photovoltaic systems — online knowledge test on the City & Guilds e-volve platform.
2. 302 — Installation and maintenance of small solar photovoltaic systems — practical assignment.

Eligibility must be confirmed first. After that, centres claim proxy unit 2922-801 so Walled Garden can release a certificate. Section 1.3 walks the proxy path; the exam-facts point is simpler: there is no knowledge-only route and no practical-only route.

Unit 301 is 30 questions in 60 minutes, graded Pass/Fail. Handbook v1.3 states that the pass mark is set at approximately 75%. That wording is deliberate. City & Guilds has not published a fixed integer cut score such as “23 out of 30.” Centres and blogs that print a guaranteed 23/30 figure are inventing a number the handbook refused to lock. Study as if you need a strong pass on a 30-item paper, and do not argue with an e-volve result by quoting a homemade threshold.

The six learning outcomes (LO) of the combined 301/302 unit are not all on the multiple-choice paper. The test specification in handbook v1.3 examines only LO1, LO3, LO4, and LO6. LO2 (work safely with solar PV electrical systems) and LO5 (test, commission and handover solar PV systems) are assessed in the practical assignment. A candidate who crams inverter nameplate data but has never isolated a live array under a method statement is preparing for the wrong unit.

Unit 301 question weights (handbook v1.3)

LO4 is more than half the paper. Sixteen of thirty items sit on design and installation considerations: string voltage and current, cable and isolation choices, array layout, inverter matching, and the installation decisions that sit under BS 7671 Section 712 and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Code of Practice for Grid-connected Solar Photovoltaic Systems, 2nd Edition. LO3 is the next block — nine questions on modules, inverters, architectures, and component behaviour. LO1 is only two questions, but they are cheap marks if you can find statutory versus non-statutory documents. LO6 is three questions on micro-generation and electrical energy storage systems (EESS) in a prosumer’s installation (a consumer who also generates).

Treat the chart below as a revision timetable, not decoration. If you have six hours left before e-volve, roughly three of those hours belong on LO4, about two on LO3, and the remainder split between LO1 documents and LO6 prosumer/EESS items. Spending those six hours colour-coding a risk-assessment template is LO2/LO5 work — essential for Unit 302, almost invisible on Unit 301.

Dates, age, fees, and a realistic booking scenario

Age: the qualification is approved for learners aged 18 or above. A 17-year-old apprentice who already holds 5357 still cannot be registered for 2922-34.

Last dates: on the City & Guilds 2922 page updated 25 May 2026, last registration is 31 December 2027 and last certification is 31 December 2030. Registration is the last day a centre can enrol a new learner. Certification is the last day City & Guilds will issue a certificate. Because learner registration is valid for 12 months only (Section 1.3), a learner registered in late 2027 still has to complete both units inside that 12-month window and before the certification cut-off. Do not plan a leisurely two-year gap between the knowledge test and the practical.

Fees: City & Guilds does not publish a candidate exam fee for 2922-34. The 25 May 2026 product page lists UK qualification fees as to be confirmed for centre account managers. Training providers set course prices. A Google result that quotes “the 2922 exam costs £X” is a centre commercial price, not an Ofqual or City & Guilds ticket. Compare centre packages (tuition, e-volve sitting, practical kit, resit policy) rather than hunting for a national fee that is not in the handbook.

Support materials: sample multiple-choice assessments and the practical candidate/assessor packs sit on cityandguilds.com under the 2922 documents list (sample test and mark scheme dated 31 October 2025 on the current page). Use those samples to learn the e-volve style. Do not treat a third-party question dump as the live paper.

Scenario: the wrong-number booking

Jordan is a domestic installer with an ECS Gold Card. A training company emails a joining pack for “C&G Level 3 solar and battery, 2923-34.” Jordan’s employer wanted MCS-ready PV installation evidence first. 2923-34 is the electrical energy storage award. The PV award Jordan’s supervisor asked for is 2922-34, Ofqual 610/4841/0. Jordan checks the Walled Garden entry, confirms 2922-34, and only then books e-volve. Mixing the two numbers would have produced a valid City & Guilds certificate for the wrong job.

Scenario: revising against the wrong learning outcomes

Sam spends a weekend writing isolation method statements and filling in commissioning sheets — excellent Unit 302 practice, and those tasks map to LO2 and LO5. The e-volve paper Sam sits on Monday morning is Unit 301, where 16 of 30 questions are LO4 design and installation. After a fail at approximately 75%, Sam rebuilds the revision plan around string calculations, Section 712, Code of Practice tables, and G98/G99 connection thresholds, and keeps the method-statement pack for the practical week.

Keep three facts in your notes before you go on to eligibility: 2922-34 / 610/4841/0, 30 questions in 60 minutes at approximately 75% Pass/Fail, and LO4 = 16 questions. Everything else in this chapter exists to stop you wasting a 12-month registration on the wrong unit, the wrong book, or the wrong occupational card.