Wind kicks up dust, dust clings to panel, no rain for months on end, panels get covered up and scratched. Turns out there’s issues to using these spaces, and you need additional hardware (and thus have additional failure modes) to mitigate them.
I think solar panels done right could actually help a desert though. Providing shade can allow some plants to thrive but most solar developers aren’t thinking about the ecology of a region.
I feel like sacrificing the deserts to save the rainforests is a trade worth making - but is such a trade even possible, or is it not that simple?
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/201...
There are important deserts and there are important grasslands and important forests. It seems a valid point that not all ecosystems are of equal importance.
Well that's a point of view that's never steered us wrong.
The only way we've done it is by eliminating everything in our path. We've been excellent at justifying eliminating entire ecosystems - when will we stop?
Probably right before we've justified eliminating entire countries of people with the weapons of death we've developed by extracting every last resource for the ground by digging it up.
Solar cells need a heat sink to keep them cool or else the efficiency sucks.
Deserts tend to be cold at night.
Capture heat during the day as a byproduct of using the solar panels, and use it at night for heating homes? Maybe I'm being too optimistic, usually things that improve efficiency don't actually work for some reason.
Further it's dangerous. Installation, maintenance become a headache and a risk.
Then, so many rooftops are not in optimal 'viewing locations'. Shaded by trees; shaded by neighboring buildings especially in a city.
It seems natural to a non-engineer to 'make electricity where you need it'. But rooftops don't scale with need, not at all. An apartment building on a lot with 3 stories or 30, same rooftop area. Terrible economics.
And electricity is fungible! Make it over there; use it over here. Almost free. Certainly cheaper than struggling to mount something delicate in the hardest place you can find.