We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Bob Eager
saying something like:

Not that I'm saying it's efficient, but Rudyard Kipling put in a genset
in a tiny water mill in about 1903 or so. It was either the wheel or the
genset - not enough water for both. The wheel still runs and the genset
has been restored.

http://www.solarnavigator.net/histor...mill_house.htm

It's speed regulation that's the problem with taking an alternator drive
from a mill wheel. Kipling's, I'll bet, had a feeder pipe from further
up the river and providing decent head to turn his turban. I stayed at
an estate in the Borders that had the first home electrics in the area -
circa 1900 or so. The old pipery was still there and turban house down
the bottom, but the high end of the intake pipe was several hundred
yards up the hill, having its own mini reservoir. There was a mill too,
but that had been ignored - quite possibly because it was in use at the
time and needed.