Next to putting panels on top of aqueducts where they serve a dual function by lowering the amount of water lost due to evaporation, deserts seem like the best location for solar farms since they're not good for people OR wildlife.  Plenty of sun also, but since they're so remote usually you have to get the power to where the people are.

Since there is also no water around, you can't build a hydrolysis plant for making H on location either, so you're going to have to build also at least one transformer station and a high voltage line to either connect it up to the grid or bring the juice to a hydrolysis plant built next to a large water supply, like the ocean preferably.  Then an H liquification plant and port capable of handling large liquid H supertankers.  Overall, a very expensive infrastructure project.

The big complaint this author has is about the possible negative climate effects because solar panels are black and don't reflect off light as well as sand, so you lose the albedo effect.  The panels get hotter than sand, and that heat will be transferred to the surrounding atmosphere.  If it's a big enough area of land, this could have significant effect on the weather patterns, rainfall etc.  That could be very bad.

My question is, do solar PV panels HAVE to be dark colored?  The photovoltaic effect doesn't require heat, the photons act directly to excite electrons and raise their potential energy (measured in Volts).  In principle, I think they could be any color at all, but the material itself has to be white in color, not painted white.  I don't know if you can make lighter colored PV panels or not.  I've never seen them any color but black.  If it's possible but none so far have been developed, that is something that could make an enterprising materials chemist a fucking gazillionaire.  Get the patent on that and you'll br richer than Musk, Bezos and Gates combined. lol.

Even not covering desert, just over regular land, the additional heat that panels produce may have an effect on climate if a significant amount of the earth surface is covered with them.  We already know that the blacktop of roads has an effect.

Anyhow, there's always risk of unintended consequences with any alternative energy.  The guys drilling in Iceland into magma chambers could set off a supervolcano.  Big windmills kill flocks of migrating birds.  Dams block salmon swimming upstream to spawn.  Nukes produce radioactive waste that takes 1000s of years to decay.  As long as there are billions of homo saps using lots of energy every day, we're going to have negative consequences.  The only real way to solve that is with less people using less energy.  Nobody wants that though.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/solar-panels-sahara-covered/1878/

Covering the biggest sand desert with solar panels: 173 TWh and the biggest mistake in human history

RE