That's right, just a week ago, June 17th. At least according to the US Department of the Interior. Eventually the facility will produce enough energy to power half a million homes, give or take:

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and California Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. today joined local officials and representatives from Solar Trust America at a ceremony launching the start of construction on what will be the world’s largest solar power facility. Located on public lands in eastern Riverside County, the Blythe Solar Power Project will generate 1,000 megawatts, enough electricity to power 300,000-750,000 homes when fully operational. The project will be built in two phases or 500 megawatts each. Each 500 MW phase of the project will provide 1,000 construction jobs per year, up to 3,000 supply chain and related jobs, and 220 permanent jobs.



The Blythe Solar Power Project is located in the southeast corner of California, close to the Colorado River just off Interstate 10.

There are about 11.5 million dwellings in California, so this one facility could power over four percent of them.

How's it going to work? Simple. Smoke , mirrors, death rays, vats of boiling liquid and very long wires:

The Blythe Solar Power Project uses parabolic trough technology where rows of parabolic mirrors focus solar energy on collector tubes. The tubes carry heated oil to a boiler, which sends live steam to a turbine to produce electricity. A new 230 kilovolt (kV) transmission line will be constructed to connect the project to the Devers-Palo Verde #2 500 kV line at the Colorado River substation.



How long will it take to complete? According to Wikipedia

Solar Millennium estimates that it will take at least six years to complete all four 242 MW units of the $6 billion project, which will be located on 7,025 acres...



but

the first phase of the project expected to start generating electricity by 2013.



Not bad.

What about the tortoises, and other desert dwellers being displaced by the project?

As part of the Record of Decision issued in October, the BLM is requiring that Solar Millennium provide funding for more than 8,000 acres of desert tortoise, western burrowing owl, bighorn sheep and Mojave fringe-toed lizard habitat to mitigate the project's impacts.



There's no free lunch. But a massive facility producing a gigawatt of power from the ultimately renewable source (unless you have problems with a four billion year burnout) seems like an excellent meal.

