@ Max Reid

"Natgas is meant for heating and automobiles, why should we use this for power generation[?]"

I am pretty sure that the Combined Heat and Power unit produces heat (as indicated by the Heat in its name). BUT, better than just a natural gas furnace, you get free electricity whist the "furnace" runs.

After flat screen TV these CHP units should be the next big thing. What surprises me is that these Honda units supply only 1.8Kw of electrical power. And that for a single family home ! Well perhaps OK for Florida, but here in the true north we are going to be needing at least 6Kw minimum unless laundry dryers and electric stoves are going to be redesigned. I will concede that at present the average continuous electrical load for a single family home is around 1kw which includes domestic hot water.... but 1.8Kw max ?

Make no mistake, this will be a heavy and politically charged issue. In another sphere, to the "authorities" this is akin to growing pot in order to bypass sanctioned drugs, the government's drugs that is, such as nicotine and alcohol.

If older posters might bear me some slack here, I think supplying some back story might be in order for younger readers who may have been inadvertantly indoctrinated by the energy companies : -

The Central Electricity Generating Boards were originally set up when coal was the main fuel. Had coal remained the only fuel there would be no story here since coal handling in the domestic scene would involve delivery/storage and preparation which is not easily automated on the small scale. Those are the reasons that precipitated the introduction of the natural gas home heating furnace around forty years ago.
However this was still the era before microprocessors, inexpensive power electronics, and the metallurgy to produce reliable reciprocating gas engines with 35% efficiency existed.

Of course if you happen to be in the power business needing to supply 5MW or more, none of these modern reciprocators will scale up well, hence the popularity of 650MW steam turbine sets. However these sets cannot average more than 31-33% efficiency since they are limited by the Rankine Steam Cycle rules. And for most of these plants, the operators have no commercial use for the 70% of low grade heat that must be dumped into cooling towers or even the local river to make the system work.

On the other hand the natural gas engines Honda has created for this domestic application have provision to use this discarded heat for residence space heating.
Take a look at the big picture. For every three units of gas purchased, the homeowner gets one unit of electricity and two units of heat energy which is usable. For every three units of gas purchased the powerplant operator gets one unit of electricity and two units of heat energy which to him is unusable.

Naturally for the operator the cost of all three units of gas must be built into the final price for which the electricity is sold. You can see the huge financial incentive for homeowners to " roll their own" and come off the grid.

It is a huge threat to the existing order since residences typically use one third of the total power consumed but are asked to bear (extorted ?) about two thirds of the total cost.

Notice that no-one minds you paying $20k to put a PV array on your roof (what I refer to as boutique energy) but this liquid cooled advanced 150cc lawnmower style of engine that Honda intends to hawk - well perhaps $2k may be at the high end. These are a whole new ball game. Install one of these and suddenly you have no electricity bill !
T2

Not needed in in warm areas, but logically something along these lines with some form wood? of external heat engine may work in the colder climes.

In the warmer areas power up from concentrated solar thermal - the higher? electrical ouput from machines so targeted may run refrigeration or more grid.whist still leaving the hot water option viable.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/07/capstone-to-dev.html ala capstone, stirling or cyclone?

What happens to the heat in summer? Does this thing only work when you are generating winter heat and you buy electric from the grid in the summer? If so it makes the perfect complement to solar in the north.

It is interesting that the Self-Powered-Furnace that has been needed for decades is finally here at a price that is rather expensive. There are many other efforts to do this or a simpler CHP unit that just only runs when the grid is running. The German steam free-piston "lion" is notable. Infinia designed sterling units are years behind schedule.

This unit cannot supply enough power to run a house hold because of its low horsepower but it can supply energy over a whole day that can equal the average use of a house; two or more units should be installed instead of a furnace and the excess power delivered to the grid could be considered in the same class as renewable or solar because the power company wastes the lost heat when it generates electricity.

Consider that you pay for the electricity, but that the heat is free because it is otherwise wasted. If there were a real concern about saving energy and keeping CO2 low these machines would be required for every new house and several of them for large houses. There will never be enough of them in the next ten years to worry about the effect on the grid, but there should be a way to pay for the power delivered to the grid to make up for the fuel and a little bit over, so that people will generate heat AND electricity with them instead of using a furnace.

For warm climates, heat can be used to cool, even solar heat. Larger Capstone turbine units sold by UTC combine heating, cooling and electricity. During peak demand periods it would good to run the machines and waste the heat to the air or a large hot water tank; this is what the power companies do anyway. A special gas price, for the machine operation only, related to the price of gas to power companies could be a good incentive. Circuits should always be arranged that if the grid fails, a limited number of circuits for some lights, furnances, refrigerators and freezers remain active. The combination of an inverter with a high speed alternator makes higher power bursts available from a smaller engine; and it may also allow time for additional machines to be brought into operation.

The electric grid may become obsolete with these and similar machines that can supply higher quality power than grid power and there is a natural gas grid. Nuclear reactors can supply energy to make liquid and gaseous fuels even from recycled CO2, But it may be best to have a buried Direct Current grid and DC to DC or AC converters. ..HG..