A friend of the family more than a personal friend of mine, was an executive of the local power company. It was purchased by Enron, and he was given a bunch of stock in the process.

Hated them, he retired and sold all his Enron. Like winning the lottery.

Anyway, before he retired he said he saw a demonstration of a gizmo the size of a beer keg. Ran natural gas into it, and got enough electricity out to power the average house.

It's efficient, and the costs were about the same as then current (no pun intended) for electricity delivered by wire.

The problem was the noise - said it sounded like a 747 in the garage.

Don't know what's happened with that idea.

Arf