Disclosures about the round-trip trades have made investors even more wary of backing electricity-generation companies, and that, in turn, has regulators worried that the deluge of negative news will hamper efforts to put construction of power plants, transmission lines and other crucial infrastructure back on track.
Zimbabwe's biggest hydro power plant, Kariba, has already cut back electricity generation by 62 percent.
Although the water has come back, electricity is still out across much of Moore, and severed power lines snake through streets and sidewalks.
People also talk about net-zero buildings, the opportunity for buildings to actually bring back electricity to the grid and almost make it a net positive instead of depleting resources.
But some experts believe that suppliers have been holding back electricity -- even in periods of low demand -- in order to push prices even higher than the outrageous levels they have already reached.
The high prices and relative scarcity of diesel fuel have resulted in part from its use by factories, which have been burning it in backyard generators as power companies have cut back electricity generation to meet national targets for limiting energy consumption.
The change has taken Denmark nearly two decades to implement, but the most critical step was the introduction of smart- or net-metering, which required utilities to buy back electricity from consumers at 85% of the price.
The heat wave that struck Europe this summer forced utilities to scale back electricity production at nuclear plants in Finland, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.
"You can't cut back on electricity or heat, so you cut back on inventory," he said.
Then you run it forwards to get the energy back out, converting the chemical energy back into electricity".
Now, in a milestone of sorts for the emerging solar industry, the finance wizards are embracing a new kind of security, this one backed by solar electricity payments.
