By Daniel Roth­berg, Las Vegas Sun:  (TNS) — Elon Musk is lob­by­ing Neva­da law­mak­ers to sup­port the devel­op­ment of rooftop solar ener­gy, and he’s doing it with a face-to-face approach.

Musk, the chair­man of SolarCi­ty and CEO of Tes­la Motors, wel­comed a group of leg­is­la­tors and a state gov­ern­ment leader to his company’s $5 bil­lion Neva­da bat­tery fac­to­ry this evening to dis­cuss how Tesla’s home stor­age bat­ter­ies can work in lock­step with rooftop solar.

The event, with pre­sen­ta­tions from Tes­la and SolarCi­ty, is meant to be for­ward-look­ing and edu­ca­tion­al but fol­lows a recent reg­u­la­to­ry rul­ing to increase solar cus­tomers’ bills. That order was derid­ed by solar advo­cates and prompt­ed SolarCi­ty to cease instal­la­tions here. The meet­ing rep­re­sents the Sil­i­con Val­ley entrepreneur’s most pub­lic acknowl­edg­ment of the deci­sion and the solar industry’s push to roll back the new rate structure.

At 6 p.m., law­mak­ers and Gov. Bri­an Sandoval’s top eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment offi­cer start­ed a tour of the Tes­la Gigafac­to­ry, for which Musk’s elec­tric car and bat­tery com­pa­ny received more than $1.3 bil­lion in incen­tives dur­ing a spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion in 2014. The group will then hear pre­sen­ta­tions from Tesla’s top tech­nol­o­gy exec­u­tive and SolarCi­ty CEO Lyn­don Rive. Musk, Rive and Nan­cy Pfund, a clean ener­gy investor in both com­pa­nies, will par­tic­i­pate in a con­ver­sa­tion with the state offi­cials, a SolarCi­ty spokesper­son said.

Actor and activist Leonar­do DiCaprio, who was at the Gigafac­to­ry Wednes­day for a meet­ing, met sev­er­al of the atten­dees who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the event.

In Jan­u­ary, Pfund, a man­ag­ing part­ner at DBL Part­ners, wrote a let­ter with Sil­i­con Val­ley investors that crit­i­cized the state’s Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion deci­sion to raise costs for all rooftop solar cus­tomers. The com­mis­sion tripled a fixed fee for the cus­tomers and slashed the val­ue of cred­its they receive for gen­er­at­ing excess elec­tric­i­ty to the grid.

“I stand by my belief that when a state has a chance to lead, as Neva­da has and could con­tin­ue to do, that sends a very pos­i­tive sig­nal to investors,” Pfund said. “When it steps back, that sends a not-so-pos­i­tive message.”

Pfund cast the event as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss how Neva­da could remain on the cut­ting edge of clean ener­gy devel­op­ment. Neva­da, she not­ed, had been a leader in solar job cre­ation and in bat­tery production.

“The one-two punch there is quite com­pelling,” she said. “We need to talk about how to regain the lead­er­ship that pol­i­cy­mak­ers in this state have been forg­ing for sev­er­al years now.”