So all they really have to do is coat the desert in solar panels if that works. Huge amount of free fuel available.
Dont see why they havnt done that already... would make a lot of sense not many people use the desert.
A couple of problems that jump straight out at me w/ using the Desert:
The desert is not a static entity, its constantly moving so "fixing" anything to it and stopping that thing from disappearing below the sand would be a feat of monster engineering.
Sand storms are pretty vicious and would lead to more expensive panels having to be built.