Also, any human artifact which shows up as a box – not a dot – on a map of this scale is pretty darn huge. We currently probably couldn’t even manufacture all the solar panels or mirrors required, even if we wanted to.

Long distance power transfer might alleviate some power storage worries, but that is a huge engineering challenge in itself. It would also increase the required area – probably considerably – and we would – again – end up with a centralized power system which absolutely depends on international cooperation, you know, kinda like oil (not to say that’s a bad thing, it just adds another point of failure).

That’s not to say solar power is forever and always not feasible. I think it’s an interesting challenge and we might expect at least some success.