The Cube

A fuel cell operating off of natural gas supply (with flex fuel options). Claim is "90 percent cheaper" than existing tech.

Certainly it would help for outages, but in something like an earthquake conventional pipeline gas supplies might be interrupted as well. I don't know what the consumption rate is if you used a local tank for fuel supply. The "flex-fuel" option mentions diesel, a common fuel for conventional emergency generators, and easier to store than natural gas. Certainly a local tank would work for short-term emergencies.

I would like to see a study of efficiency of a widely-used decentralized system like this versus a conventional natural-gas generating plant transmitting over power lines. It's not cut-and-dried: many variables to balance, and highly dependent on location.