China plans to start building its first solar-thermal power plant next month, a pilot project that the government hopes will pave the way for building at least 150 megawatts worth of solar thermal power projects by 2015.

The China Academy of Sciences will design the 1.5-megawatt project, reported China Daily this week. The academy, along with the Ministry of Science and the Beijing city government, will fund the 100 million yuan ($14.62 million) project in Beijing.

The country has been a hub for making and exporting solar panels, and it's been busy installing solar-panel based systems throughout the country. Now it wants to explore other types of solar technologies. A solar-thermal power plant, unlike a solar-panel installation, uses the sun’s heat instead of light to produce electricity.

Building a solar-thermal power plant is a more complex and time-consuming project, but its large scale promises to delivery electricity at far cheaper prices. It requires a lot of land, and many projects already built or under development in Europe and the United States are taking place in sparsely populated areas. BrightSource Energy, a U.S. solar thermal power developer, recently inked a 1.3-gigawatt deal with utility Southern California Edison.

China’s pilot project is set to occupy 13 hectares (32 acres). It will take 10 Chinese research institutions and companies to build and operate the power plant, said the China Daily.

There are several solar-thermal power plant designs, and China is interested in the one in which an array of 100 mirrors concentrate and direct the sunlight toward a 100-meter tall tower for boiling some kind of liquid and generating steam. The steam is then piped to a generator for producing electricity.

The power plant is scheduled to come online in 2010.