Well another completely wild solution would be to make end users responsible for storing electricity during non-generation hours. I.e. "each home having a battery device." I just made this up now but thinking about what the end result might be...

encourages:

  - more people to buy electric cars that can also act as a whole home battery
  - even more research dollars in storage/battery tech
  - distributed power grid
  - resell electricity to grid (or maybe even local neighbours)
  - short-term power outages are handled by design
  - people think more about their electricity usage
  - people may be more likely to generate power at home

downsides:

  - unnecessary extra cost to end users
  - might be less efficient then centralization
  - certain markets/peoples will not be able to easily access stored electricity?