The Solar Trust of America will break ground on the world’s largest solar plant next month.

The plant, which will actually be a series of four 250-megawatt solar plants on over 7,000 acres in the Mojave Desert has come to be known as the Blythe project. It’s located just a few miles outside of Blythe, Calif., on federal public lands.

“There’s nothing like it in the world,” said Solar Trust spokesman Bill Keegen. “In fact, the closest thing to it, we built—the Andasol project in Spain.”

That Spain array has, up until now, been the largest solar plant in the world. The company says it’s enough to power 300,000 American homes.

The Blythe plant will eclipse it, producing 1,000 megawatts. It will be the first solar power plant in the world to produce a full gigawatt of power.

The Solar Trust of America is the U.S. joint venture of two German Solar giants—Solar Millinnium AG and Ferrostall Solar. They created the Trust in 2009 to pursue U.S. solar projects, Keegen said.

“And that’s just what they’ve done,” he said.

The Trust has nine total projects in the U.S. so far, all on public lands. There are seven in California and two in Nevada, Keegen said.

They’re all big.

“Feerostall is known for building big stuff,” Keegen said, “really big stuff.”

The companies rely largely on parabolic trough technology that uses trough-shaped panels covered in photovoltaic solar cells and mirrors to heat a liquid in the center that’s used to generate power.

“It’s a proven technology,” Keegen said. “It’s very efficient, and it can produce the types of power we’re talking about.”

The first of the project’s four solar plants is expected to be operational by the second quarter of 2013, Keegen said. The second should be producing power about seven months later. The next two parts of the plants will come in a second phase of development, Keegen said.

The Government’s new fast-track process for utility-scale solar projects on public lands enabled the Trust to get approval for the Blythe plant within one year. It was a record pace, Keegen said. These contracts typically take two or more years, he said.

The Blythe plant was the sixth major utility-scale solar plant U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has approved on Federal public lands this month. Companies are scrambling to get approval in time to break ground before the end of the year, so they will qualify for special tax incentives.

Pictured: Parabolic troughs in the California desert.