Tell me about it.

We don’t have a permanent stream, but we do have enough intermittent flow in the winter to keep a 55,000L tank full. So our install entailed building a huge tank, a filtration system for water ingress (as it’s also our potable water supply, and a firefighting reserve in summer), digging 400m of trench over nightmare terrain with 70m of vertical drop, crossing a road twice, burying 90mm HDPE water line, fibre and 4x25mm2 power (latter two not necessary for hydropower but useful to have, and if I’ve got a trench open I’m putting everything in it at once) - and then building a hydro shed, installing the turbine, connecting it to our grid via a grid tie inverter, configuring our grid to accept power from it, setting up automations to turn it off and on depending on power demand and the level in the tank, and of course all sorts of side quests to achieve the above.

It has been neither cheap (about €12,000) nor easy (perhaps six weeks of full days for me, if added up over the year it took), but it has given us enough extra power in the winter that the petrol generator is now under a pile of crap in the shed, getting dusty.