41% of the HHV is roughly twice what the Freewatt achieves.  It's better than many powerplants.  I would like to know how far this unit can be turned down; if it can be cranked down to perhaps 20% and the water vapor condensed for heat, a somewhat larger unit (2 kW) would be perfect as a domestic cogenerator for US homes.  Freewatt worries about producing power in excess of consumption, but it would be very easy to use electric heating elements as dump loads when average electric production exceeded domestic use.

With net metering any excess power can just be sold back to the grid, a la photovoltaic installations in California. Considering the surge in natural gas supplies in US, domestic cogeneration looks like a good bet--probably more efficient usage of CH4 than fueling a centralized combined-cycle power plant, which itself is a big step up from a coal-fired plant.

@HarveyD the peak loadings on a house are normally heating / cooling related which it is possible to substantially reduce with good building design.

Whilst the loadings on a single house can vary by that much, averaged out over many houses, the load profiles become much smoother.

The point is to keep net consumption down close to zero, Harvey, not provide 100% of instantaneous demand.

This is the sort of thing that would work beautifully in conjunction with an EV or PHEV.  The fuel efficiency of the total system is much higher than the individual pieces in isolation so long as space heat/DHW is required.

E-P: The ideal would be zero energy consumption but as you know that is impossible in North of USA. The best next thing may be a very well built all-electric home equipped and controlled to use as little clean e-energy as possible.

We went from a large 5-bedrooms average built all-electric house (using an average of 65+ Kwh/day) to a much smaller 2-bedrooms, better insulated, south facing, all-electric, condonium, equipped with better appliances, SEER-25 heat pump, 3 LCD HDTV, programmable temperature controls etc using an average of 25 Kwh/day.

We could possibly do even better but we would have to reduce our hot water consumption, use a much smaller fridge, do away with the wine cooler, Use my 24-inch monitor as a TV, convince may wife to get use to 20C instead of 23C during the winter months, use the micro-wave instead of the large oven, change all windows and patio-doors for triple plate-glass units etc

Covering all 16 sq. M of window panes (all due south) with see-through high efficiency solar panels + 50 Kwh batteries + converters etc may make the place almost e-energy self-sufficient but could cost up to $80K (i.e. whenever the essential techonologies exist)

NB: The e-energy we already saved (about 40 KWh/day) could be enough for 4 small BEVs.