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February 9, 2026<\/p>\n
2 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Bad Bunny\u2019s Super Bowl halftime show highlighted Puerto Rico\u2019s power grid. Here\u2019s why<\/p>\n Bad Bunny performed part of the Super Bowl halftime show from a power-line-themed set, drawing attention to the problem of widespread blackouts in Puerto Rico<\/p>\n By Stephanie Pappas edited by Andrea Thompson<\/span><\/p>\n Bad Bunny performs at the halftime show of the 2026 Super Bowl.<\/p>\n Ishika Samant\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Dancing linemen who dangled from power poles during the Super Bowl halftime show by Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny were a pointed reference to the island\u2019s power grid, which has been hit hard by a series of hurricanes and, experts agree, is in dire need of modernization.<\/p>\n In the past year, however, Trump administration appointees at the Department of Energy have canceled $815 million of a $1-billion fund meant to bolster the island\u2019s grid against storms and outages.<\/p>\n In 2017 Hurricane Maria destroyed 80 percent of the island\u2019s transmission and distribution lines, and this led to months-long power outages. In 2022 Hurricane Fiona again knocked out power for more than 80 percent of the island\u2019s residents. Widespread blackouts have become a regular feature of life in Puerto Rico. There \u201celectricity problems are an everyday problem,\u201d said Max Lainfiesta, then a member of the Islands Energy Program at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, to Scientific American in 2022.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n After Hurricane Fiona, Congress passed an appropriations bill that delivered funds to the territory with the aim of building a resilient, distributed energy system for the island. The Trump administration canceled the majority of the funding this past spring, however. And in January the administration delivered a death blow to a program that was meant to deploy backup solar and storage systems at hospitals and at 30,000 homes of rural, low-income and medically vulnerable people, according to Latitude Media. Further cuts, such as the dissolution of the DOE\u2019s Grid Deployment Office, which was responsible for managing the appropriated funds, have also left the future of Puerto Rico\u2019s grid in question.<\/p>\n Administration appointees cited the reliance on renewable power as the reason for the cuts and blamed renewables for the island\u2019s electricity reliability problems. Local advocates say that individual solar backup systems are critical to protect residents from repeated outages.<\/p>\n The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority is also $9 billion in debt, and negotiations over repayment restructuring with BlackRock Financial Management and other creditors crumbled last August after the Trump administration fired all but one member of the federal board that had been overseeing the negotiations, according to CNN.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the first time that Bad Bunny (whose real name is Benito Antonio Mart\u00ednez Ocasio) has called out Puerto Rico\u2019s grid problems. In 2022 he released a mini documentary, entitled El Apag\u00f3n (Spanish for \u201cthe power outage\u201d), that decried the unreliability of the power system. According to Politico, the singer also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an advertising campaign to oust prostatehood politicians. Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth; Bad Bunny supports the Puerto Rican independence movement.<\/p>\n The advertising effort fell short, with Jenniffer Gonz\u00e1lez, a prostatehood conservative, winning the governorship. Gonz\u00e1lez has said that the solar installation money will be redirected to fixing power generation, transmission and distribution, according to the news outlet El Nuevo D\u00eda, but the DOE has not clarified how the funds for the canceled grants will be distributed.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 9, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Bad Bunny\u2019s Super Bowl halftime show highlighted Puerto Rico\u2019s power grid. Here\u2019s why Bad Bunny performed part of the Super Bowl halftime show from a power-line-themed set, drawing attention to the problem of widespread blackouts in Puerto Rico By Stephanie Pappas edited by Andrea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[1295,4121,8261,3800,2491,613,14083,1664,8262,22954,241,3687],"class_list":{"0":"post-44101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-bad","9":"tag-bowl","10":"tag-bunnys","11":"tag-grid","12":"tag-halftime","13":"tag-heres","14":"tag-highlighted","15":"tag-power","16":"tag-puerto","17":"tag-ricos","18":"tag-show","19":"tag-super"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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