Instead of making a stream dynamo I always go with the extra utilities survivalist generator. It doesn't produce very much but it runs for a very long time and is super efficient
I started with a steam dynamo, but now I'm wishing I'd made a survivalist generator and then later upgraded it to a culinary; the survivalist may be slow, but it runs for literal hours (over 4 hours!) on a single block of coal, giving you far more total energy than a copper dynamo for the same fuel (I'm powering a lava producer from a survivalist so I can make obsidian in an igneous extruder instead of mining it; I don't use a whole lot anyway). I also discovered that you can place a comparator on Extra Utils generators (as well as TE's energy cells) to output a redstone signal based on how full the energy buffer is. Combine that with a Buildcraft gate on a wooden pipe or TE itemduct with a pneumatic servo in, and you can automatically pump in fuel when your stored energy gets low and shut it off when there's a bit of power available.
I learned the comparator trick when I set up a cow farm to feed their offspring to a slaughterhouse and meat packer (so I could get pink slime for a laser drill). Later on I replaced that with a grinder so I could get their drops instead of meat ingots. The killing machine drops its output into a chest, which feeds the raw meat into a TE furnace, which then fills a barrel with its output, which feeds a culinary generator with a comparator on the side to make sure it doesn't waste any energy (plus a spare hardened energy cell that I had no other use for once I made a redstone cell). I even added a sewer under the breeding pen so I could collect the XP orbs from breeding (as mob essence), then ran a line from my grinder to the mob essence tank.
So basically thanks to a single culinary generator, I get plenty of food and leather every time I add a stack or two of wheat from my automatic wheat farm (which is running off my main base power instead).
I also have a culinary generator at a rebuilt zombie dungeon, powering a grinder there. That's the main way I fill up my mob essence drums, and the rotten flesh, carrots, and potatoes help extend the fuel I give that generator. (Rotten flesh, appropriately, gives you somewhat less energy than what it costs to power the grinder thanks to a somewhat low drop rate, and the others are rare drops.)
So yeah, definitely a strong vote for survivalist and/or culinary generator as a good early-game generator. If you get shears early and wouldn't mind finding or dyeing some pink sheep, a pink generator is also a reasonable choice for the early game, but I'd rather go with something that lasts forever or feeds on my usual early-game food surplus.
