Which availabilty was largely due to a government program that funded development and promotion of compact fluorescents and which subsdized their purchase for a time.
Mind you we still use one heck of a lot of incandescent in homes. Some of them are for appropriate reasons. Light quality (fluorescents give some people headaches), extreme heat which cfs don't survive well, or frequent switching on and off (ditto). But many of the cases wehre incandescents are used are where cfs would be perfectly appropriate. This is a tiny example of where feebates would make sense. Tax incandenscents, and use that to subsidize cfs to the point where the cost is exactly the same. People would still use incandescents where they make sense for the reasons I gave or others I have neglected, but would otherwise use the cheaper to operate longer lasting CFs. And this would be much more effective in getting people to switch from inappropriate incandescent use than increasing the price of electricity.
In terms of the creek running past your house google "micro-hydro". In terms of practicallty you have both both technical and legal questions - for example how much head your creek has , and who has the legal right to extract the power if there is a significant amount that can be ecomincally tapped. (Head is important because if your creek is low head than the turbine to tap it would be very expensive compared to the power it would produce.) In terms of micro vs. macro I'm afraid I was using micro data to reinforce a macro argument. That is after having pointed out the macro data that supported my point, I then was simply pointing out that every study on the micro level (that is studies that cover samples of individual residences or firms) found regulation and availability of public money driving efficiency measure much more than cost flow analysis.
I think part of it is simply how people think. "This costs more than that." "I'll get in trouble if I don't do that" "There is this big gob of money available for the taking if I do that" influences how we think much more that NPV of cost/benefit flows. When it comes to energy, apparently this is true even in businesses where you would expect calculations that at least somewhat approximate those of neo-classical "rational man". There are all sorts of reason why they don't - ranging from power relations distorting cost control structures, to transaction costs of paying attention to energy expenditures when they constitute a comparatively small portion money spent.
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