BrightSource Energy’s plan to raise $250 million in an initial public offering may advance its goal to use solar-thermal technology across the Southwest at generators with the equivalent capacity of 11 atomic plants.

The Oakland-based company, which counts Google (GOOG) among its investors, registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week to sell stock for the first time in a document that identified projects that could potentially earn $4 billion of revenue and produce 11 gigawatts of power on 110,000 acres in California and elsewhere in the Southwest.

The IPO would boost BrightSource’s plan to build more plants that use mirrors to focus the sun’s energy on boilers that make steam for power turbines. BrightSource vies with bigger suppliers including Abengoa, Acciona, Siemens and ABB to commercialize a technology that is struggling to be chosen over photovoltaic panels and gas-fired generators.

“The technology and the company both require billions of dollars in project financing and electrical infrastructure to continue growing,” said Nathaniel Bullard, a solar analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance in San Francisco. “The sector faces challenges not only from falling costs of PV and electrical storage technologies but also from low natural gas prices, which could suppress demand for solar generation.”

All renewable energy projects will face a tougher U.S. market if federal tax incentives aren’t renewed before their scheduled expiration next year, according to an April 20 Bloomberg Government Briefing written by Rob Barnett, Marisa Buchanan and Joe Richter.

Technologies including wind and solar energy made up about 45 percent of total power capacity added in 2009 and about a quarter of additions in 2010, Energy Information Administration figures show.

The IPO would be the first for a solar-thermal power systems maker in almost a decade, according to New Energy Finance data. EnviroMission, based in Victoria, Australia, filed for its IPO in August 2001. It has a license to build tower-based solar-thermal power stations, though it hasn’t yet erected a utility-scale project.

Current shareholders stand to gain from the offering, including San Bruno venture capital investor VantagePoint Capital Partners, which owns 24.9 percent of the company’s shares. BrightSource founder Arnold Goldman’s Los Angeles Advisory Services has 7.5 percent, Draper Fisher Jurvetson 6.7 percent and Morgan Stanley 10.5 percent.

BrightSource promotes solar-thermal as superior to photovoltaic because energy can be stored. That gives the plants a more stable output of power, making them more attractive to grid operators.

Both PV and solar-thermal systems like BrightSource’s currently produce electricity at a cost of about 17.5 cents a kilowatt hour in ideal environments, without incentives, New Energy Finance estimates, and the cost of solar PV power may decline by about half in the next decade. Electricity from coal costs about 7 cents a kilowatt hour compared with 6 cents for natural gas.