SolarCity Gigafactory Will Revive Buffalo’s Manufacturing Sector
To help jump start new industry in the area, the State of New York, in cooperation with SUNY Polytechnic Institute, has struck a deal with SolarCity, the solar energy company founded by Elon Musk’s cousin, Lyndon Rive. The state is investing $485 million into a Gigafactory in Buffalo that will manufacture up to 10,000 solar panels a day. In total, the state will invest as much as $750,000,000 to construct and equip the enormous factory.
The State of New York will retain ownership of the 12,000,000 square foot manufacturing facility and lease it to Solar City. Company officials recently reported that the Gigafactory is nearly 90 percent complete and that it hopes to start installing equipment this summer. “Manufacturing is scheduled to begin in 2017,” Rive says. “SolarCity has committed to employ at least 1,460 people in the city of Buffalo, with 500 jobs at the manufacturing facility. We will employ a total of 5,000 people in New York state by the 10th anniversary of the completion of the facility.”
Those sorts of projections are how you get a state to build you a factory. The company has said it will spend $5 billion on capital, operations and supply-chain support over the next decade at the facility.
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