Testing and Errors: Aligning Cybersecurity Expertise in Contemporary UK Energy Infrastructures

Digitalization of the grid promises a sustainable energy system. However, we do not fully understand how innovative technologies are introduced—and challenged—in legacy infrastructures. In this article, I explore how energy industry practitioners in the UK perform alignment work to incorporate novel digital tools into existing systems. I present my argument in three parts. First, a new wave of digitalization challenges an established order of preplanned and highly assured infrastructure engineering with agile and experimental innovation practices. However, this is not happening without pushback from professionals responsible for safety and stability of supply. Second, I show how software innovators and legacy maintainers temporarily leave their roles to align their practices and bridge their respective communities. By arriving at shared understanding of “testing” and “errors,” both groups advance digitalization while remaining cognizant of the unique temporalities and materialities of energy infrastructures. Third, the negotiations are aligned by the shared goal of cybersecurity, which is reframed as a solution to bring together the divergent epistemic cultures found across the industry. What emerges as a result is digitalization enacted on terms shared by innovators and maintainers; a piecemeal, contested, and slow process, resistant to the dominant cultural narrative of urgency and haste.