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Am I understanding the article correctly? They're guessing that because there was no solar wind which would normally trigger aurora, the Earth must have passed through a sort of rogue wave in the heliosphere, which also was strong enough to induce a current in the ground?

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Not rogue. And I'm unsure if wave is the correct term. I think what they're implying is that when passing through a "fold" in the heliospheric current sheet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliospheric_current_sheet) the polarity flips. I presume that the tighter the fold, the less distance between the polarity change, the greater the induced current; tight enough and the polarity is different between two close points on earth, inducing a greater than normal current.

But I didn't pay enough attention in high school physics, so....

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