Honestly the nut we should be cracking is putting solar in our deserts and figuring out how to transmit the electricity. Tons of land with really not current uses and a whole bunch of sun shine.
We have figured out the latter already. High-voltage direct-current transmission has losses in the low single digit percent per 1000km. China is transferring several nuclear power plants worth of power over thousands of kilometers already today.
Edit: Wikipedia says that the Chinese connection I remembered has a capacity of 12GW over 3300km.
But, battery technology has been at a standstill for a while. New battery technology seems as far away as cold fusion some days. And without battery storage, I don't think you could really serve the world's power needs with just wind and solar. (But I'm also 100% a layperson, so hell if I know.)
But most of the world's energy storage is not and will not be chemical batteries.
you can use hydro power as energy storage as well, just pump some water back uphill into water reservoir and use it later to generate electricity when you need it.
that way you can store energy in form of potential energy of water
Deserts are hot, reducing conversion efficiency and panel lifetime, and dusty, blocking sunlight at the surface unless cleaned frequently.