Instead of launching solar panels into space and getting free energy there, they could be placed on Earth to save the launch costs and get free energy here. Let's ignore that because the following is far more interesting ;)
To give you an idea of the scale of the problem that such an enterprise would be dealing with: the ISS has a cooling capacity of less than 100kW and current mining infrastructure has a power consumption in the order of gigawatts. This energy ends up as waste heat that needs to be dumped into space at the same rate. So for every gigawatt, there is 10000 times the cooling capacity of the so-far largest human-made object in space required.
> Instead of launching solar panels into space and getting free energy there, they could be placed on Earth to save the launch costs and get free energy here.
I suppose Solar panels in space can be arranged such that that it's always solar noon, and it's never cloudy. So more efficient at collecting than on the ground, in theory.
To give you an idea of the scale of the problem that such an enterprise would be dealing with: the ISS has a cooling capacity of less than 100kW and current mining infrastructure has a power consumption in the order of gigawatts. This energy ends up as waste heat that needs to be dumped into space at the same rate. So for every gigawatt, there is 10000 times the cooling capacity of the so-far largest human-made object in space required.