Solar panel farms

Green energy sources are popping up all over the landscape. Colorado mountains are planning on using water run-off from the Rockies during summer months for power. Giant wind turbines are off the coast of Europe in the sea generating power from the wind current.

There is even a gigantic farm of solar panels somewhere in Spain harnessing the suns rays (link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15698812/). Which leads me to ask the question, "Why is it necessary to build unsightly farms of reflective panels when all we could do is reproduce the same experiment we used to perform as kids with a magnifying glass, the sun, and a poor little ant?"

Why not use a giant reflective lens either positioned on a high tower or up in the hills to concentrate the sun's rays into a single solar panel? If a magnifying glass can fry an ant, why can't it mutiply the effectiveness of a single panel? Perhaps the cost of a giant lens would be too costly.

And to go one step further, create a mirrored-surface parabolic dish (such as the Bell ExpressVu or DirecTv satellite dishes) with some sort of tennis-ball size "solar panel" to collect all that energy. Combine the satellite dish and solar panel into a single unit and distribute it across North America.