well, we do have natural gas lines feeding many homes too. I don't have any clue what the distribution losses are there vs electricity (they may keep the pressure low to minimize leakage losses), certainly it would be good for heating/cooking, transportation is a little less clear. They do have
@home cng compressors but they use 800 watts to fill up your car overnight and no other comparison points (800 watts overnight is comparable to my EV usage, but I don't know how many btu you can pump overnight). There is also something of a
network of cng stations (though folks are complaining of high prices for GGE).
I would hope you get a fair bit of range after pumping cng or bio equivelant for your 8kw.
Here is one with more specifics:
http://www.cngofokc.com/fueling/home-fill
2gphE @ 3hp, roughly 1.2kwh per gallon to pack it into your car, which is 1/33 of the energy content, but you would get 3x the mileage from that 1.2kw in an EV, but we have a glut of bio to try to leverage, and cng has a lot more range typically (and we have a lot of vehicles that could be more easily and cost effectively converted to cng than electric)
quick cost check: nat gas is about $0.57 (usage) for the energy equivalent of one gal gasoline plus $0.12 of electricity to turn it into cng. fixed service fees for nat gas is ~$13/mo and elec ~17/mo fyi, around here.