An attempt aims to find out an alternative to avoid expanding existing fossil power plants to cope with a high growth demand of electricity in Indonesia could be done through electrical energy efficiency improvement. Provided that in-depth knowledge of end-use characteristics of electricity consumption is known, in this study, a primary survey was conducted between Nov. 2011–Jan. 2012 to investigate the characteristics of urban household electrical energy consumption in Indonesia. Data were collected from 600 respondents living in seven major cities in Indonesia, only 474 (79%) of respondents were considered to be valid. The result shows that, lamps, television sets, refrigerators and air conditioning units are appliances that have the greatest potentials for electrical energy saving. The information from the survey was then adopted to initiate energy saving programs to avoid construction of new power plants. It was found that if energy efficiency improvement programs are initiated and implemented for the four types of appliances mentioned above from now to 2030, the costs of saved energy (CSE) of these energy saving programs are only a fraction of the long run marginal cost (LRMC) of new power plant constructions, ranging from 5.1% for lamps, 21.6% for television sets, 80.9% for refrigerators, and 19.5% for air conditioning units, respectively. In addition, energy efficiency improvement program can also help to reduce total amount of electricity generation and CO2 emission. In 2030, this alternative can reduce amounts electricity generation and CO2 emission attributed for household sector by 21.4% and 21.6%, respectively, as compared to the conventional supply side of expanding new power plants.