New uninitialised SSD not showing in Disk Utility
Old thread, but just run to similar problem myself. My old HDD broke up, and had no chance to format my new SSD anywhere.

New disk was not listed on Disk Utility, when booted the machine with USB-installer and so that I was not able to format the disk and I was not getting nowhere. 

I noticed that I was able to run Terminal during installer (Top ribbon)

I checked all devices with command-line Disk Utility:

diskutil list


And the new Disk was listed there.

Then format using diskutil:

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ NewDisk /dev/&lt;disk id&gt;      


The new disk was formatted and reboot. Disk was now listed on Disk Utility and I was able to install the macOS without issues.