“any power in excess of what we could store ourselves would be shunted to ground. That means wasted...”
If you set your thermostat to normally cool to say 78 degrees, a solar smart thermostat-based system might cool your house to the lowest temperature you like, say 74 degrees to put the excess energy to use.
Refrigerators and water heaters might also have similar solar smart thermostats.
That is a good one! It doesn't get to 78 degrees around here very often; we set the thermostat on the two mega window air conditioners we have to 65 in the summer so that when it gets above 70 outside we have somewhere comfortable to escape to.