Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Highlighted Puerto Rico’s Power Grid. Here’s Why

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show highlighted Puerto Rico’s powerfulness grid. Here’s why

Bad Bunny performed portion of nan Super Bowl halftime show from a power-line-themed set, drafting attraction to nan problem of wide blackouts successful Puerto Rico

By Stephanie Pappas edited by Andrea Thompson

Bad Bunny performs astatine nan halftime show of nan 2026 Super Bowl.

Ishika Samant/Getty Images

Dancing linemen who dangled from powerfulness poles during nan Super Bowl halftime show by Puerto Rican vocalist Bad Bunny were a pointed reference to nan island’s powerfulness grid, which has been deed difficult by a bid of hurricanes and, experts agree, is successful dire request of modernization.

In nan past year, however, Trump management appointees astatine nan Department of Energy person canceled $815 cardinal of a $1-billion money meant to bolster nan island’s grid against storms and outages.

In 2017 Hurricane Maria destroyed 80 percent of nan island’s transmission and distribution lines, and this led to months-long powerfulness outages. In 2022 Hurricane Fiona again knocked retired powerfulness for much than 80 percent of nan island’s residents. Widespread blackouts person go a regular characteristic of life successful Puerto Rico. There “electricity problems are an mundane problem,” said Max Lainfiesta, past a personnel of nan Islands Energy Program astatine nan nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, to Scientific American in 2022.

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After Hurricane Fiona, Congress passed an appropriations measure that delivered costs to nan territory pinch nan purpose of building a resilient, distributed power strategy for nan island. The Trump management canceled nan mostly of nan backing this past spring, however. And successful January nan management delivered a decease rustle to a programme that was meant to deploy backup star and retention systems astatine hospitals and astatine 30,000 homes of rural, low-income and medically susceptible people, according to Latitude Media. Further cuts, specified arsenic nan dissolution of nan DOE’s Grid Deployment Office, which was responsible for managing nan appropriated funds, person besides near nan early of Puerto Rico’s grid successful question.

Administration appointees cited nan reliance connected renewable powerfulness arsenic nan logic for nan cuts and blamed renewables for nan island’s energy reliability problems. Local advocates opportunity that individual star backup systems are captious to protect residents from repeated outages.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority is besides $9 cardinal successful debt, and negotiations complete repayment restructuring pinch BlackRock Financial Management and different creditors crumbled past August aft nan Trump management fired each but 1 personnel of nan national committee that had been overseeing nan negotiations, according to CNN.

It’s not nan first clip that Bad Bunny (whose existent sanction is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) has called retired Puerto Rico’s grid problems. In 2022 he released a mini documentary, entitled El Apagón (Spanish for “the powerfulness outage”), that decried nan unreliability of nan powerfulness system. According to Politico, nan vocalist besides spent hundreds of thousands of dollars connected an advertizing run to oust prostatehood politicians. Puerto Rico is simply a U.S. commonwealth; Bad Bunny supports nan Puerto Rican independency movement.

The advertizing effort fell short, pinch Jenniffer González, a prostatehood conservative, winning nan governorship. González has said that nan star installation money will beryllium redirected to fixing powerfulness generation, transmission and distribution, according to nan news outlet El Nuevo Día, but nan DOE has not clarified really nan costs for nan canceled grants will beryllium distributed.