This thesis could not have been written without support from the inhabitant of a large basement, just outside of Reading. Here, in a space that looks like the offspring of Nasa's mission control room and the New York stock exchange, lives the 'brain' behind the UK's power network. This is National Grid's Electricity Control Centre, a partially-automated system responsible for monitoring millions of sensors across the UK to maintain a constant level of 400 kilovolts throughout the grid's five thousand miles of powerlines - ensuring a continuous flow of electricity to this computer and every other electrical system in the country.