Extremely high temperatures reduce efficiency. Extremely low temperatures at night mean high stress from thermal cycling. The desert is full of dust which reduces efficiency.
Finally, the desert is not just a mass of sand, it's a full on ecosystem that experiences impacts from laying large farms on top of it.
> it's a full on ecosystem that experiences impacts from laying large farms on top of it.
You think that the Saudi government, with the extremist clerics holding a knife to their throats, their citizenry on life-long unemployment welfare, with their drive to continue to make climate change worse, who spill oil on the sand and billow smoke into their skies, give one tiny iota of a shit about a delicate desert ecosystem?
If you screw up the ecosystem, the result is haze, mist, and other obstacles to solar power, not to mention animal and human interference.
From what I understand, Saudi oil produces less carbon than other types of oil. So the Saudis are expecting they will be among the last to shut down - which a reasonable assumption.
Otherwise you would be shutting down a lower carbon fuel in favor of higher carbon fuel.
Sand is operating in reverse as it absorbing heat near freezing and releasing it as temps get above freezing...
Sorry I did have quite a bit of physics once upon a time..