Service quality in the Dominican Republic has suffered a steady deterioration since the 1980s. Frequent and prolonged blackouts result mainly from financial causes (i.e. high system losses and low bill collection) that are further aggravated by technical factors (i.e. unadequate investments in transmission and distribution). Poor service quality is also characterized by large voltage and frequency fluctuations. The transmission system in the Dominican Republic is weak and overloaded, failing to provide reliabl.