If you have space for a pond but no reliable flowing stream, you can use the pond as the battery for your solar panels. Each kWh of storage in a 2m deep pond will take about 100 m^2 of area. A typical American house would use 6 kWh or so per night, but probably someone building a system like this would use less.
I don't have enough flat space for that. I do have a large mountain, but there's no room for ponds on that - more's the pity, no streams nearby either.
Calculations: https://www.google.com/search?q=12+kWh&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=...