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I work for an electrical engineer that works for a couple utilities and whomever else hires us. It is rarely worth building your own hydro system unless you are really far (10 miles) from the closest hydro pole. You will have to aquire a water lisense to use the water on the creek. This alone can be a huge hurdle. I know a few people who have small solar setups for thier full time residences but the are expensive to install and maintain. I have seen small micro hydro setups that basically use a pump with the water running through it backwards, the pump drive shaft is attached to an alternator or in one case an old VW generator out of a bug. The AC out of the alternator was rectified and used to charge a pile of 1.5v batteries. The panel had a load shedding system to prioritize the loads so that if too much stuff was turned on the system would automatically kill power to less important things. When there was excess power and the batteries were all charged it was dumped to a resistor bank and became heat. One guy dumped excess power to his hot tub
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