That's the explanation that makes the most sense to me.
I did a little research on the exploding-consoles phenomenon. It first occurred in TOS "Where No Man Has Gone Before", wherein the Enterprise hits an energy field at the edge of the galaxy, causing consoles to explode amid many electrical-like discharges. Nine crewmen die offscreen (and two contract ESP); it's already unclear whether this is from exploding consoles or the discharges.
It happens again in TOS "The City on the Edge of Forever", when time distortions from the Guardian at the Edge of Forever "overload the control circuits" and blow up Sulu's console in his face.
Exploding consoles doesn't seem to happen again until the Kobayashi Maru sequence in STII:TWOK. Here the cause is (simulated) Klingon torpedoes, and the (simulated) console explosions cause several (simulated) bridge fatalities. So now we're seeing a fictional portrayal of simulated console explosions causing pretend fatalities. Many more consoles would explode on the bridge of the Reliant by the end of the film, though, in a similar fashion. If it matters, these consoles would have been detonated primarily by Enterprise phaser fire hitting the Reliant bridge almost dead on.
After that exploding consoles were pretty much just an accepted trope in Trek. On the one hand, yeah, circuit breakers. On the other hand, lightning has been shown to regard fuses, suppressors, and surge protectors as suggestions to be ignored at leisure. It's not totally unreasonable to think that the energy discharged by phaser fire, antimatter torpedo detonations, time distortions, and ESP would likewise do whatever it pleased. To paraphrase The Jerk, "They hate the consoles! Stay away from the consoles!"