I haven't actually tried to do this, but I do know that all internal combustion engines need periodic rebuilding. Look at it this way - 200,000 miles on your car is really only about 5,700 hours of operation. That's only about 8 months. A NG engine should last longer because it burns cleaner, but you'll still have to rebuild eventually - sooner rather than later - if you run it all the time.

You should consider this cost (and inconvenience) when you compute the economics of the idea.

There's also the noise to consider, though this can be ameliorated by siting the genset well away from the house (and from your neighbors' houses, too).

I've always thought a fuel cell would be perfect for this situation. There's supposed to be some company working on a natural gas fuel cell for home heating and electricity generation, but I don't think it's affordable yet (or if it's even available). I haven't been following this scene closely, so someone who knows more about this should correct me if I'm wrong.

If I were you, I'd probably just use gas for everything possible. For instance, a friend of mine who has a gas well on his property has gas air-con.

You might even get a natural gas powered Honda Civic and a home fueling compressor. That'd be pretty cool.

Interesting you mention ng fuel cells, since I saw a technology park in Sydney Australia, that is powered by a natural gas fuel cell, sort of a reverse UPS - it falls back to the city power in the event of a failure.

I imagine the upfront costs are huge, though. This was government-funded. I wonder, though, if you could sell power to neighbours, or back to the electricity grid - again, in Australia, you can install solar panels on your roof and what power you don't use, goes back into the national grid (this is the most cost-effective method of solar in many ways, since there's little loss since you're generating right near the demand, and not requiring any new infrastructure) - in essence, the meter runs backward. If you were contemplating this, I'd look into selling the excess.

As DavidR pointed out, the wear and tear on an internal combustion engine needs to be factored in, also, a lot of the dedicated natural gas standby generators (costco even sell them, online) are probably not rated for continuous use.

As for the noise, that can be ameliorated quite easily (with money) by constructing the correct enclosure, I've worked with diesel generators built for the film industry that are so quiet, you have to look at the meters to make sure they're running.

I don't know about here, but most places you can convert most gas vehicles to natural gas, not just civics. You just have to get a compressor which may not be super-easy, but well worth it in your enviable case.

Certainly you want to get a nice gas stove - always my favourite, yet, paradoxically although pretty much everyone here in this part of Canada can access natural gas for heating etc, and does, very very few people have gas stoves - in addition to being a nicer way to cook, it's a simple way of keeping your indoor humidity up a bit, too.

it's a simple way of keeping your indoor humidity up a bit, too.

Not to mention your oxygen down and your products of combustion up. It amazes me that with the high-output burners and ovens of modern gas ranges, code allows their installation without any venting to the outside.

There is NO WAY I would own a gas range in a new, tightly built house unless I had a hood right over it, wired to run any time the range was operating, or I had a good air exchanger near the range.

My house is old and not very tight - good thing, since Margaret insists on a gas range. ;-)

You also need to consider the quality of the NG that you will be getting.
It may have a high moisture content or contain other contaminants, and will not be oderized (though if it contains any hydrogen sulphide you will likely be able to smell that).

I don't know about automatic operating range hoods - they sound like a good idea, but I'd certainly insist on a venting one when we get a gas stove, we have electric with a recirculating hood, pretty much a waste of time.

Somehow a gas stove'll burn better than many of the unflued heaters I've encountered, I've never smelled the nox I've noticed with heaters.

It goes without saying you'd need a CO and gas detector (assuming gas detectors will work with the added odour) - as anyone should have if they have gas appliances.

I don't suppose it's likely the gas people will odourise or otherwise treat the gas right there at the site, so I'll be interested to see how they'd set all that up, not to mention permits etc since it'd hardly be a standard gas installation.

I get the impression from my friend who has the gas well that he gets standard utility gas, treated and odorized, from the main - just like we do. The free gas is part of his payment for the use of his property, but the well apparently isn't directly connected to his house.

No idea how that's plumbed.

BTW, he looked into generating his own power with a natural gas genset, just as rodmc proposed. He ended up using the genset for standby power. He's gradually accumulating PV panels instead, with the objective of eventually going off grid. Presumably then the NG genset will supplement the PV when skies remain overcast for too long.