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Short abstract

Always-on energy systems maintain a state of readiness, waiting to meet demand and absorb disturbances. However, maintaining such readiness requires considerable inputs, while reproducing dependencies and overconsumption. This study asks: what does infrastructure readiness promise, and at what cost?

Long abstract

A guiding idea in energy policy, “keeping the lights on” expresses the expectation of abundant, undisturbed energy supply. “Always-on” energy systems are held in a state of readiness, “waiting” to meet demand or absorb disturbances. Uninterrupted supply is frequently seen as non-negotiable and a matter of national security, sustaining modernity and particular social, economic, and temporal orders.

Sustaining uninterrupted energy supply requires constant work and maintenance, making readiness an active, resource-consuming, and technically organised form of waiting. Energy infrastructure requires anticipatory maintenance, emergency repairs, and grid extensions that build redundancy into the system. At the same time, always-on energy systems enable and reproduce practices, expectations, institutions, and technologies that depend on substantial amounts of continuously supplied energy. The imperative of “keeping the lights on” by maintaining technological resilience suppresses questions about energy sufficiency and the “needs” from which demand for uninterrupted supply arises.

This contribution explores what maintaining infrastructure in a state of readiness means in terms of its material demands and the promises it makes about uninterrupted provision of energy. Drawing from infrastructure studies and maintenance and repair studies, we investigate the strategies of securing the Finnish electricity grid through expert interviews and participant observation. We examine the professional, economic, and political realities of maintaining its readiness, asking how they contribute to creating dependencies and patterns of consumption. Contributing to debates on maintenance, sufficiency, and resilience, the study asks how the hard-earned promise of uninterrupted energy influences understandings of normality, directing the interlinked trajectories of societies and planetary states.