We also have space lasers and mirrors. I can imagine some sort of orbital parabolic mirror setup that keeps a few acres at 2000C in the dead of winter and vapo

We also have space lasers and mirrors. I can imagine some sort of orbital parabolic mirror setup that keeps a few acres at 2000C in the dead of winter and vaporizes any birds that fly over the power plant site. We're nowhere near the point where that would make sense, but it could let us harness more than the earth's surface area of sunlight for energy production. It will probably have to wait until after we plunge ourselves into some a perpetual winter trying to mitigate climate change. Of course, a ring world or dyson sphere would make it obsolete.