Has anyone ever heard of the BlueGen from the Australian based company Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited? They have a commercially available 2kW SOFC system. Boosting efficiencies over 60% electrical and >90% total. I think that there should be an article about their technology, they are way ahead of other technologies....

Matthijs G - u stole my thunder lol Blue Gen developed by CSIRO and being commercialised through a "retail" arm, Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited. http://www.cfcl.com.au/BlueGen/ This Australian FC is well tested through Europe and is close to upscaling.

This looks really interesting. The only problem is that I'm currently paying around 1400 USD per year for household electricity. It will need to become a lot more efficient before it's an economic proposition. (Being self sustained an greener does sound good though.)

That is definately one of the ways to go for alternative energy. They should just have mentioned the word "sewage" somewhere in the article as to indicate where the methane gas can possibly come from.
What is the life expectancy of such a system?

Why scale up and concentrate on home use... Leave it this size (or scale down) and put it in EV's instead of batteries. Turn Dairy Farms into gas stations.

How big is a domestic unit? What does the article mean when it says that Americans consume 2kW of electricity? This is surely incorrect? How much Methane is consumed to produce 1kWh of electricity?

As Riaanh asked what is the life expectancy of such a system plus how much does it cost compared to small scale steam, ICE or gas-turbine electrical generation. Both full life-cycle, and up front expense. It doesn't matter if it will cost less overall if you can not buy it in the first place.
How are they going to dispose of the carbon monoxide?

I have been following the BlueGen as well. What I believe most important about this concept is it is a move away from centrally generated power,which if the stories I've read are accurate,could doom our high-tech civilization in the event of a bad solar geomagnetic storm ( see: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/a-perfect-storm-of-planetary-proportions/0 ),which has occurred already on a small scale,or the efforts of terrorists.

like many articles the information stops short of giving cost information : what is the projected price of these units ? what is projected cost per kw ? how do they compare to the Australian units ?

Didn't see any projected cost numbers. How much /W and /kwh?