As I cycle around my adopted country I see lots of evidence of water powered mills, very few still in use. One local town even still has a building (now used as a kind of community centre) called the Power House, which originally generated power for the town.
These sites could all be revamped and turbines installed, well within modern engineering capability. Of course the amount of energy produced would be small compared to large industrial generators. But it could be used for local, short distance supply.
Our model of central generation and distribution does not allow for this thinking and so all this flowing power potential goes to waste. We would rather generate centrally at huge scale then suffer massive transmission losses (resitance, induction, capacitive) on long distance lines.
Whilst they are essential base line capacity, nobody wants a Hinckley or Sizewell on their skyline. Micro generation coupled with battery / hydrogen storage would seem to help. But of course this will not be accepted by the share holding, obscene director salaried monopolies - it's simply not in their interest.
Maybe they could be not for profit operations? Course the bureaucracy thrown up by the giants lobbying the government on 'safety and operational grounds' would make sure it would be still born.
Meanwhile, Wales( and probably Scotland) throws away a huge amount of potential power every day.