Researchers from Birmingham, Anglia Ruskin and South Wales university draw on research carried out in 2015 as part of an arts and humanities-based project in South Wales (UK), a region once dominated by coal extraction. They present and discuss material from sixteen oral histories recorded with long-standing members of the village of Ynysybwl. Reading their accounts through the lens of emotional-affective constructs reveals not only participants’ emotions about aspects of energy production and consumption, but also the atmospheres and affects arising within and out of the energy system. This brings to light the affectual agency of the energy system as an infrastructure assemblage and its role in everyday production of space. Related to this, it surfaces essential aspects of experiences of energy system change.