What most people have a rough
What most people have a rough time with is the idea that H2 is energy in its purest natural form. It's, as you say, a storage option so we have to think of hydrogen fuel cells and tanks as batteries. They're much longer lasting and thus cheaper over time than chemical storage, but getting the energy (H2) into them is a more expensive (in energy use) process. For now, anyway.
One of the things I've been interested in is the Honda Hydrogen Home and similar projects. The idea is pretty simple: solar panels gather power and send it through household water (usually gray water) and create H2 and O. The two elements are then, separately, sent into home appliances (water heaters, furnaces, and other NG appliances). There they reduce energy consumption by significant amounts. Excess is also fed into a compressor which can then be used to fill the tanks on a fuel cell car.
The idea is that using free power from solar to create hydrogen for use in various ways in the home is more effective long-term than is feeding power into the grid (on buyback schemes) or storing it in chemical batteries (which are expensive and degrade over time). Pure H2 can be stored, burnt, or sent through a fuel cell and used and the oxygen byproduct can be vented to the atmosphere or used to further improve burn rates in appliances.