BrightSource Energy, a Google.org backed startup we covered a few weeks back, opened their Solar Energy Development Center in Israel this week, and it features an enormous test plant that looks as improbably perfect as a rendering.

The tower in the distance of this picture stands 180 feet tall and is surrounded by 1,600 mirrors that focus the sun's rays onto the commercial boiler that sits atop the tower. In a real plant that boiler's steam output would be used to generate electricity with a turbine, but the company didn't put a turbine in the test facility. BrightSource estimates that a plant this scale could generate 1,500 kilowatts of power.

PG&E, the northern California utility, has agreed to buy 900 megawatt of electricity from the company, and they recently announced a $115 million round of funding.

A host of solar thermal companies are racing to construct pilot plants as a step towards commercializing their various solar concentrating technologies. For more background on the technology and various industry players, check out our previous solar thermal coverage here, here, and here.

There are a couple more awesome pictures after the jump.

The field of mirrors as seen from the so-called "Power Tower" of the test plant.

A close-up of the Power Tower itself.

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed, and webpage; Wired Science on Facebook.