Solar power production on the day side would give amazing efficiency, except for maintenance hell maybe.

I wonder if we could extract energy in other ways, like using the cold side for data centers (cheaper AC), or large pipes to extract the moisture from the cold side and heat it in the day side, to generate energy.

I always day dreamed of a way to extract energy from the heat gradient between cold and dark sides. Possibly a huge pipe with a heat exchanging fluid at higher latitudes.

But with the prices on solar in recent years, I think that’s mostly discarded.

Those are local prices. You're forgetting about the expense of shipping, and I'm guessing the last mile problem in that particular set of logistics is a big one. Finding skilled laborers in local manufacturing might also be pretty expensive, so offshoring will be much more favorable even with the higher shipping fees.

You can stand up a thermoelectric panel exactly at the terminator, and collect energy by transferring heat from its day to its night side. The night side would be radiating to -270 degrees Celsius, warmed only by whatever convective air is around.

> temperate, twilit ring straddling them.

That sounds like a cool sci fi setting

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson has a city on Mercury that stays at twilight on the terminator, but being on a rotating planet, it has to keep moving on a massive track. Until it doesn't.

Throwing something older than the sibling comments onto this: Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny (1971).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_of_Shadows

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders from a few years ago has this exact premise. It was nominated for a Hugo - I thought it was just OK.

Even a tidally locked body can still liberate (as the moon does) so the terminator would at least move around over some fraction of the surface. Maybe together with a dense atmosphere that could be enough to redistribute the heat and keep the dark side from freezing out the gases?

"Librate". It probbly concentrates the ice closer to the center.

With enough atmosphere, like Venus, and some libration, I guess you might be able to get convection cells going enough to distribute heat. But really, the galaxy is absolutely lousy with planets. if you are equipped to get there at all, there is no need to make do in a hellhole.

All of these dim-star photosphere-hugging planets are an artifact of how we are obliged to find them. There are certainly myriads of planets that just need a half-billion years with some algae to become idyllic vacation spots.

Ice mining is honest work.

For robots.