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There are benefits to being in the bay area, too. This happens to not be one of them.
Living in "a part of the country that has basements" is no utopia either.
Also: my house, in the bay area... has a basement.
There are plenty of more efficient ways of doing things, but I still stuck solar on this old, energy inefficient house.
Giving up one foot of space along one garage wall is not a big deal. And if you're worried about physically getting the batteries into place, hiring people would still be cheaper than movers.
Also, a basement that removes cooling costs for the home lab would not make a big difference. If the 800W A/C unit runs 8 hours a day for 4 months out of the year, then it's only about 10% of the home lab power use. Since it's not needed at night it's probably even less.