Why do grid operator have to pay customer to use up the excess electricity to avoid the potential blackout. But can’t they ground it into the literal ground/earth?
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They can’t “ground it into the earth” because that would cause all sorts of issues. The thing they do most often is designate certain plants to “follow” the load. Most plants these days have high-tech exciter equipment that magnetizes the generator field (the rotating part of an AC generator) in a precise manner. They can program the exciter to put out a certain amount of voltage which corresponds to a certain amount of power out of the generator. If the power out is decreased, the amount of torque needed to drive the generator goes down so the throttle can close down, saving fuel/steam.
During all this, the RPMs the generator turns will not change. The generator is synched to the “infinite bus,” which is essentially the grid as a whole. One generator or even a whole plant cannot significantly change the frequency of the whole system, so all the plant can do is change the amount of power it’s pumping into the system.
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