Brightsource Energy could go public as early as Thursday on the Nasdaq, and with that move the solar power plant developer will be making history.

How, you ask? For one thing, the Oakland, Calif., company is managing to accomplish something that few (if any?) solar startups have done: raising massive amounts of money to build a massive solar power plant in California. The two other solar technology developers who also have become major power plant developers are SunPower and First Solar, and both entered and built their first big solar farm after they had built up their core manufacturing business and gone public.

Here are five reasons BrightSource’s IPO is important. via GigaOM