The world’s largest demonstration plant for a new kind of renewable energy storage is up and running in the west of the China. Called liquid-air energy storage (LAES) the plant uses renewable electricity to compress air to extreme densities until it turns to liquid. It can then be rapidly released to power a turbine and discharge that green energy back into the grid.
Consuming the excess energy is also good, even if it never goes back when production is low.
If a factory that makes H2 all the time is converted to one that only makes H2 when there is excess energy, you turned an energy consumer into a grid stabilizer which in addition creates other kinds of value. It would serve the same purpose as a battery.
Since it went from being an energy consumer, to an excess-energy consumer. Consuming excess energy is good for the system, and you reduced demand when there is little supply, which is very similar to just increasing supply when there is little (what a battery does).
This goes for basically any product (that is not the bottleneck of course). You just pay for storage of that product instead of energy storage. You also need more production capacity though. Which is expensive since a machine that stays idle is just “being wasted”.