Imagine large pools of a solution, in a desert, nonetheless. 

On the surface of the solution there is a thin layer of what seems to be circuitry. If you look closely, you would see thousand of of small interconnected islands over the liquid. Some of this islands you recognize as solar cells. The others absorb the liquid and transform it somehow, either into a different liquid or into a powder that sediments at the bottom.

Well this wild idea occurred to me.