BrightSource Energy, Inc. last Friday filed a form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering (IPO) of its stock. The news follows a Series E round of private financing, which attracted an investment of $168 million from Google and a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy.

The company is attempting to raise up to $250 million in sales of its stock for business purposes, including investments.

“We intend to use the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures and working capital. Pending such uses, we intend to invest the net proceeds from the offering in interest-bearing, investment grade securities,” the company said.

The date for the IPO and the amount of shares to be sold were not disclosed. The stock offering will be managed by Goldman, Sachs & Co., Citi and Deutsche Bank Securities, according to BrightSource.

Other solar companies, like First Solar, Inc. and Evergreen Solar are publicly traded companies. But BrightSource is a solar thermal company, making its IPO a little unique, said JPMorgan Chase alternative energy analyst Christopher Blansett.

“I think they’ve actually been trying to go public for a while now. If they don’t do it soon, they may feel like the window is closing rather than opening.”

The company’s outlook over the next few years is relatively good, with 14 power-purchase agreements in place and 2.6 gigawatts of projects in development.

“I think they’ll be nice, profitable systems for the company. But what happens in three- to four years?” Blansett said.

JP Morgan is relatively skeptical of the solar industry right now, according to Blansett. The reduction of subsidies in Germany and potential for other subsidy reductions in France and Italy could hamper growth of the solar industry, he said.

“I think we’re coming into a massively oversupplied PV [i.e., photovoltaic] market. We think we’re entering into a pretty tough pricing environment,” he said.

To show more stability, BrightSource will have to up its future projects.

“This is going to be a lumpy business. They need to get a lot of systems going in multiple different regions,” Blansett said.

And the end of or reductions in subsidies could hamper BrightSource’s ability to develop other large-scale solar projects.

BrightSource said it was unable to comment on the IPO.

Image courtesy of BrightSource.