The different electricity distributors owe their customers a total of US$923 million dollars for the blackouts they have experienced since 2003. The estimate comes from the Energy Institute at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) in a report given to the Listin Diario. The study is based on an average demand of 800 Giga-watts per year, with the residential sector using 45% of this total. This would mean that the private sector demanded 360 Giga-watts per year. However, the study also allows for an average of six hours per day of blackouts, and, according the General Law on Electricity, article 93, the customer is supposed to receive one and a half ours of free electricity for every hour of blackout. Thus, the customer is theoretically supposed to receive nine hours of free electricity for every six-hour blackout. Since the average price of a kilowatt hour in 2005 was US$0.18 cents, the clients should have received an average of US$24.3 million per month in compensations. The figures for 2003 and 2004 are US$20.8 and US$27.4 million respectively. The study points out that it only looked at residential customers of the electricity distributors, and if the industrial and commercial sectors were included, the compensation would perhaps as much as US$56 million per month.
The government has been known to apply the Electricity Law one-sided, and at no time has given paying consumers a break. On the contrary, so far those who pay for the service have been penalized with continued tariff increases.