Inventor Dean Kamen is planning a 2.5 kW home version of his Deka Research Beacon 10 Stirling engine that could provide efficient around-the-clock power or hot water to a home or business, reports Forbes.

Kamen says the current Beacon is intended for businesses like laundries or restaurants that use a lot of hot water. “With commercialization partner NRG Energy, he’s deployed roughly 20 of the machines and expects to put them into production within 18 months,” says Forbes.

But Kamen has bigger plans: feeding excess power to the grid by networking devices across a region together. Depending on the price of natural gas, “ten years from today the probability that you are depending on wires hanging on tree branches is as likely as that you’ll still be installing land lines for telephones,” he says. “Close to zero.”