I rechecked, and you're right about the price. I must have been looking at a different plant.. not sure, I cant find the page again. I adjusted the numbers in my post. Thanks.

there's a dead comment from a new account that says this:

"1) regarding price, it's probably PV at those prices, as CSP today comes in at least 2x of PV installed capacity cost and that's taking a very aggressive estimation- although one could probably get CSP costs down to $1/watt with the design and procurement scale economies being talked about. 2) Regarding Venning's point about demand, even with significant amount of energy storage, this would create quite a bit more peak power on sunny days than their current grid demand can handle so announcement may be based on a couple (dodgy to me) assumptions: a) either they assume building it out in phases slowly over time to accompany some aggressive assumed demand growth or b) they are thinking about power exports in a region where Saudi Arabia probably doesn't have too many politically viable customers"

1) regarding price, it's probably PV at those prices, as CSP today comes in at least 2x of PV installed capacity cost and that's taking a very aggressive estimation- although one could probably get CSP costs down to $1/watt with the design and procurement scale economies being talked about. 2) Regarding Venning's point about demand, even with significant amount of energy storage, this would create quite a bit more peak power on sunny days than their current grid demand can handle so announcement may be based on a couple (dodgy to me) assumptions: a) either they assume building it out in phases slowly over time to accompany some aggressive assumed demand growth or b) they are thinking about power exports in a region where Saudi Arabia probably doesn't have too many politically viable customers