For the $1.3 billion in tax incentives that it put on the table to attract the Tesla gigabattery factory outside Reno, the state of Nevada hopes to generate $10 billion in new investment and generate $100 billion in economic activity, St. John reports, based on local news coverage. “A Giga factory could serve as the focal point of state economic development efforts around energy storage, from plug-in cars to grid-scale batteries,” he writes. “But the most potentially disruptive application for Giga factory production could be on the distributed solar-battery front. Tesla and SolarCity are already combining solar PV and behind-the-meter batteries for residential and commercial customers in California and a few other U.S. markets. Batteries are still too expensive to make sense for most solar-equipped customers, but falling solar and battery costs are set to make them a cost-effective combination for many markets in the coming years.”
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