"What Americans want" is a non-starter. Americans want to live in detached single-family housing and drive Cadillac Escalades. Any serious application of intermittent renewables (solar, wind) will require fitting the demand to the supply, not the other way around. Factories will only run when the Sun shines and the wind blows. Air conditioners will only run when power is plentiful.

Solar power has become so cheap and plentiful that at midday, electricity prices become negative. You will simply have to adapt to only using electricity when it's available.

it still doesn't require literal 100,000+ acres to work.

You are not up to date with present-day solar tech. 100 000 acres (405 km^2) is 25 000 MW, larger than even the Three Gorges Dam (the largest power plant of any type) in power production.

Also, 405 km^2 is really not that much. Nevada is 286 382 km^2, for comparison. Producing power in a neighboring state/province is really not that big of a problem anymore, with recent advancements in long-distance power transmission.