This actually is a cool story, even though it looks anti-solar, it is actually pro-solar, helping us realise the distributed nature of community and domestic solar would actually be far more robust to solar flares than the grid. The nature of a solar flare, and EMP pulses in general is that most of the energy is very low frequency; larger antennas couple more efficiently into EMP than smaller, and the largest antennas of all are grids. The wavelengths in EMP from solar flares would be huge, because they are generated by physically huge phenomena, but their effects on things presenting only small antennas, like most electrical and electronic systems, would be minimal, the trouble would start when antennas are miles long, like transmission lines. What the received energy would look like in various places is very large DC offsets, lasting many seconds which would break down insulation designed for AC alone in some places, with "inductive kicks" resulting from those, whiplashing in all directions along faulted transmission lines, from the points of fault.
I hope it reasures all to know that Community and Domestic Solar is coming, the proof is here:
Perhaps you would like to do a similar analysis of the US system - I would offer to do, but I think it has to be done by residents within each country, i.e. with "Skin in the game", to be credible.
