Well, ideally you want to produce the electricity close to where it's needed, and a significant proportion of the world's population lives in coastal areas (much more than near deserts I suppose).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link.
HVDC transmission losses are only around 3.5% per 1000km.
So you could get around 80% of the energy you produce in Mali to Norway. Doesn't seem so bad.
Siting solar on farmland increases farm yield and cuts water loss.
It could work on an arid sea shore though, say, in North or South Africa. But there seem to be closer-by large consumers, and maybe producing freshwater would bring more value than producing hydrogen.
North Africa, India, Australia and other have deserts right next to the ocean.
Solar farms are wholly compatible with agriculture. Look up "agrivoltaics".
* this is a form of energy transmission that requires labor for the actual transport (the train crew) and so is automatically much more expensive and difficult than a dumb pipeline or power line which requires much less staffing
* it's hard to create energy storage that isn't also a bomb in the wrong conditions, and train tracks pass through populated areas. Fuel already has restrictions on where it can be routed because there have been fuel train explosions.
Producing hydrogen near the ocean and shipping it on a tanker is another realistic alternative.
They collapsed. The reason they collapsed was that there turns out to be less than zero value in siting solar farms in the desert, and solar panels have got so cheap that you do better posting more of them nearby instead of paying for the long cable.
The reason solar farms in the desert have negative value, vs. siting nearby, is that panels in the desert get hotter, so run less efficiently than over water or plant life, and last many fewer years. Furthermore, panels in farmland improve yield and water demand.
Projects like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec were based on the cost estimates at the time. Now solar panels are much cheaper and it's a good thing.