Thread: Could a natural gas powered electric generator be used to generate electricity for the home cheaper?

My gas cost is pretty high. Way more than electric in the winter. I'm not sure that you would save any money.... It would probably be more expensive. I say if you really wanna stick it to the man think more like solar.

If natural gas is cheap enough compared to the cost of electricity, it might be much cheaper to generate your home electricity requirements with a natural gas motor/electric generator. I'm sure the gas companies would LOVE it if everyone did this! And, if everyone stopped buying electricity because this worked, the electric companies would have to lower their prices to compete!

A couple of years ago I heard a story where the citizens had cut down on their electric consumption considerably. The power companies weren't selling enough electricity so they had to raise the prices. You also have to figure that the price of natural gas would increase as demand increased. Look at what happened with the price of diesel back in the 80's. Might be better to look towards solar energy.

simply no

About the only way you might be able to produce electric power cheaper than the power company is with a small wind driven generator.

If you include the capital cost for a solar power system, it simply can't compete with the power company and the economy of scale that their system has.

You want to save some bucks, cut down on your energy consumption. That is the cheapest and simplest way.

I recently made a few rough calculations and figured it would be cheaper but the payback would be lengthy due to the investment.

Natural gas generators are readily available but are going to cost $4-5k to be big enough for the whole house, even then you have to consider where you live and ac demand since this uses alot of power, although natural gas powered ac is available.

Even at my local rates of 4:1 gas versus electric, it was going to be a long payback.

Gas prices have risen since the "dash for gas" by generation companies eager for a quick buck on de-nationalization.