Interesting to see a mention of Space Above and Beyond. I don't think I've heard anyone mention it in years! I think I still have all the episodes on VHS somewhere, too bad it got canceled by Fox like everything else good.
If you want to store energy during the day and release it at night (and you have the resources to build 550,000 square miles of solar collector) why not build a bunch of launch loops? Then you get cheap space launches out of the deal too.