[dragontamer]

Desert-like land is terrible for solar panels because the solar panels get too hot (and lose efficiency).

The big, successful desert solar power projects I've seen are giant arrays of mirrors using some kind of weird heat engine, rather than PV-cells.

Cheap, widespread desert solar power would be good to figure out, but with regards to PV-cells, desert environments look like a no-go.

[dmurray]

How much efficiency do they lose? Desert land is orders of magnitude cheaper than German farmland, and the latter appears to be economic to cover in PV panels, so if we could get the cost of materials down we could deal with losing 20% or maybe even 90% efficiency.

[dragontamer]

I don't know the answer to your question, but lets assume 20%.

If PVs are 20% less efficient in the desert, you'll need 25% more PVs. (Ex: Instead of buying 1MW worth of panels, you need 1.25MW of panels to generate only 1MW of power)

If PVs are lol 90% less efficient in the desert, you'll need 900% more PVs (instead of buying 1MW worth of panels, you need 10MW worth of panels to make 1MW)

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Because PVs are the "expensive part" of solar power (and land is really, really cheap, even German Farmland), we're more interested in reducing the number of PV-panels to buy, rather than reducing the cost of land acquisition.

[ncmncm]

Panels that normally get 20% conversion efficiency are typically 12% in the desert summer. So, a huge loss.

You want your solar panels mixed into farm and pasture land, instead. Which there is quite a lot of.