Solar panels have always bothered me because they require such intense manufacturing and usage of scarce resources. TLDR of article: “Many people will argue that if low-tech solar panels are less efficient, we would need more solar panels to produce the same power output. Consequently, the resources saved by low-tech production methods would be compensated by the extra resources to build more solar panels. However, efficiency is only crucial when we take energy demand for granted, sacrificing some efficiency may gain us a lot in sustainability.”
Re transmission - yes there are increasing losses - but the OP is about cheap panels, so cheap electricity. It doesn’t have to go so far, for example I’m thinking that the population in the Sahel is projected to increase a lot - that highest fertility in the world, as these regions develop they’ll need electricity.
As for your non-forest, I’d call that scrubland, certainly not desert - which implies to me sand or bare stones, deserted by almost all life not just by people. Of course flowers can bloom even in the desert on occasional years after rains. Indeed the whole Sahara was much greener, only a few thousand years ago, and maybe could be again if we could work out the secret. But that’s still a perturbation, and even with solar panels, there’d be plenty space left.