The initial grid was built by the utilities, which also built the generation which fed the grid and the distribution network fed by the grid. They were able to plan and control the entire process and their state utility commissions were prepared to oversee the process. The generators were typically larger than recent wind and solar generation installations and could be sited convenient to the existing grid. The generators were also dispatchable, as opposed to the intermittent nature of wind and solar, which drastically complicates grid management. Building wind and solar generation as dispatchable generation (including storage) would greatly simplify grid design going forward, but that would significantly increase the installed cost of wind and solar generation facilities and thus their delivered cost per kWh.

If "time is of the essence", it is only because of the arbitrary schedules the Administration has established for zero CO2 from electric generation by 2035 and net zero by 2050, not because of any "climate crisis", "climate emergency", or "existential threat". Those are the conclusions of political science, not climate science.

Additional renewable generation, absent appropriate storage, is redundant generation, capable of displacing (but not replacing) conventional generation. Redundant generation increases system cost and intermittent generation increases grid complexity. Storage could compensate for intermittency, but also at increased cost.

It would help if we KNEW that the "solution" was really a solution. Today, we don't.