Aertaris

Aertaris is an internal venture of this office, like Aervante. It is the harder design problem of the two: a business-to-business product in a regulated market, sold to people who already have spreadsheets that work, and where being wrong has financial consequences.

01The problem, in one sentence

Data centres and industrial loads wait months or years for grid connection. A bargain is forming to fix that — faster interconnection in exchange for enforceable curtailment when the grid is stressed. But the utility cannot be the only judge, and the customer cannot self-grade. Somebody neutral has to record what actually happened.

Aertaris is that record. When the grid asks a load to reduce consumption, it verifies the requested reduction against the delivered one — ramp rate, duration, exceptions, outcome — and turns a promise into something auditable and settlement-ready.

02Designing for people who already have a spreadsheet

The competition here is not another product. It is a project manager with a spreadsheet, a calendar reminder and twenty years of instinct. Anything that asks them to re-enter what they already track will lose, and a dashboard of charts nobody acts on will lose faster.

So the console answers three questions and refuses the rest: how much capacity is in the queue, what is due next, and what is already broken. Capacity, financial security posted, deadlines inside thirty days, and compliance breaches flagged — four numbers across the top, and nothing competing with them.

open the console

03The milestone track

Interconnection runs a fixed sequence — application filed, feasibility study, system impact study, facilities study, interconnection agreement — and the whole job is knowing where each project sits and what it costs to slip. That became a track: filled dots behind you, a ringed dot for where you are, hollow dots ahead, each with its date.

It reads in about a second, which matters, because a portfolio administrator is scanning several projects rather than studying one. The status pill and the deadline are the only coloured things on the card — amber for at risk, green for on track — so the eye lands on exactly what needs a decision.

04Restraint as a credibility argument

Energy software mostly looks like energy software: dense chrome, gradients, gauge widgets, a dark theme doing the work that clarity should. Aertaris goes the other way — a navy workspace rail, a light working surface, real hierarchy and generous space.

That is a positioning decision, not a taste one. The product's claim is that it is neutral — trusted by a utility and its counterparty at the same time. An interface that looks like an advocacy tool undermines that claim before anyone reads a number.

rail#0A1B33 surface#F4F7FA at risk#A2701E on track#2E7D6B breach#A0433A

05What shipped

• Identity, and the marketing site at aertaris.com — positioning, market argument and the pricing model.
• The operator console: portfolio, verification and docket watch.
• The portfolio view — capacity, financial security, deadline and breach counters, with per-project milestone tracking across RTO territories.
• A status language — at risk, on track, and a next-deadline line that names the obligation rather than just counting days.

06What it demonstrates

Aervante shows this office can make a consumer product feel expensive. Aertaris shows the opposite muscle: taking a genuinely complicated, regulated, unglamorous domain and making one screen answer the only questions that matter. Most design portfolios contain one of those two. The argument for this one is that the same person did both.