> When clouds roll in, people are not OK with their TVs turning off. So you'd always need the traditional grid in place, even if it's for a few days a year.

Sounds like a great argument for municipal generation and storage. If nothing else, it's both cheaper than "everyone on his own" and could lesser the strain for long-distance infrastructure (which could still be nice for geographic smoothing).

> So, yes, a huge amount of solar can figuratively blow up the electrical grid.

Demand-controlled EVs could take a lot of the load. In fact, it's probably one of the sanest applications of massive solar installations (beyond the potential of future power-to-gas tech).