Southwest Service Providers Request Solar Project

Yes, a nice small step. It won't necessarily get any newer generation solar thermal plants in when the RFP specifically states "Only commercially proven, ... CSP technologies will be considered." Someone else will have to take the risk.

Funny math. 25% of 250 MW is 62.5MW, not 50.

With the utilisation rates for solar this is not half the size of a coal-powered plant, at 25% it will produce an energy flow of around 50MW, as against the output from a coal-fired 500MW peak capacity of 60-70% of around 350MW.
You are not alone in this confounding of peak watts with average output.
The British government recently announced plans for 33GW of capacity in off-shore wind - every one of the heavy papers and the BBC did not realise that that meant around 10GW of actual output!

A nice first step. The requested size (250 MW) is in the neighborhood of half the size of a coal plant. I'm looking forward to the day when enough of these newer generation solar thermal plants will be built to establish a reliability and cost record. Once these are known, the risk premium paid to finance these plants can be reduced and the cost of the energy they produced lowered.

Stephen B

Actually the capacity factor for CSP trough plants is about 40% and the most recent figure I saw from NREL for coal-fired plants is 50% - counting peak only is deceptive. So 40% of 250 is 100 MW. By the way there are several projects underway in California and elsewhere for 400 MW or 500 MW CSP plants. And these are just a tiny fraction of the solar resource that is available in the southwestern US. NREL estimates the total at 7 million MW.