It's weird that that's possible as such an easy solution, and all those electrical engineers never thought to use it, instead putting in load banks and all sorts of contrivances to heat metal in an emergency, or find complex ways to hide excess production in normal load and balance production by managing the generators.
Even weirder that the people who run solar grids opted to pay people to take excess power rather than just dumping it on the ground, although a lot of them have also taken to heating metal instead, or water for smaller home setups.

Yes, you can technically connect your generator directly to the ground. This isn't something people want to do because it can damage equipment.
It's why that heating metal trick is used as part of the emergency shutdown rather than as part of load regulation, and they don't want to use it because they have to make sure the right bit of metal melted.

None of this has anything to do with people needing to react to excess current in an electrical grid, and not just let it be a situation that happens. It requires intervention was the point of the phrase.