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I'm not sure how much more I could really save. I've changed all my lights to flourescent (and probably should crank them up higher to prevent hibernation mode). I've restrained myself pretty well with AC (pretty much only a week or two in July) [don't ask about using a heat pump during the winter]. I've been moving more from the microwave to the stove (doesn't help efficiency, but usually involves cooking better). I think the biggest area left for improvement is my computer: I use a freebie 21" CRT from work, and am starting to think that plunking down the money for an LCD would have been cheaper already.
I had given this a bit of thought already due to a discussion on another site between Texans. One guy had just gotten power back after Ike (as in yesterday) and couldn't stand that his house was designed assuming that electricity and AC would always be there (he wasn't a native Texan...). One thing that came up was solar power. The Austinite claimed that solar panels would pay for themselves in 8 years (I wouldn't expect that here in semi-sunny Maryland). I got to thinking, how much could I build a house to use less power (I'm in an apartment, thus the heat-pump only winter).
Assuming Texas style heat (kind of goes with efficient solar), I'd want a ground-based heat pump. I'd like to know why they aren't popular in Florida (you should hit water in a few feet, pump it up and through the heat exchanger, then back into the muck). Maybe the ground isn't as useful a temperature as it is just south of the Mason-Dixon line. As long as I have a "cooling pipe", I'd also try to run it to the refrigerator (and probably an extra freezer, efficient freezers mean buying big sales). This should drop another huge bump in power usage. Skylights, efficient lighting, checking the ventilation/air flow before construction (CFD is typically computationally expensive because you are modeling turbulence: computing laminar flow should be cake - as long as I don't have to write too much of the code myself).
One elephant that recently deposited himself in the room is the Chevy Volt. Try checking residential power usage and then compare it to the kWs listed next to horsepower. Scary stuff, try to draw as much into your house as a Geo Metro can pump out and you'll blow all your breakers. Since the thing will be charging over many hours, this isn't quite as bad (and presumably when the AC is off/low), but this type of thing will take a lot of power, especially if you think you can somehow run the hydroelectric plant backwards an night.
Finally, as far as a stop-gap thing, I'd say that a well designed (presumably not by a committee hand-picked by Enron) nuclear power plant would be closer to a long term solution. There are some breeder systems that put out pretty small amounts of waste (anything really reactive gets consumed by the reactor) and what's left has a remarkably short half-life (I have visions of 22nd century miners swearing as they try to break into Yucca mountain to get that 5% used uranium).
That's just from an outside observer. Try asking someone who's been without power for a week or two.
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