$150 extra from 40 hours of AC is insanely high. That's about what I pay total in the middle of summer in Florida for a decent-size SFH. Check the insulation on your house for a leak. Also maybe consider upgrading to a ductless heat pump mini split. That would almost certainly cut your marginal cost to near $30/month.
My electric hits $400+ a month in the summer and it’s just going to get worse when our pool is completed. I live in a new 2500 square foot house in Arizona, our insulation is fine. And we have two pretty nice heat pump/ac units.
Fair enough. But in Arizona, it's not like you're just turn off the AC completely and let the house bake in the 115 noonday heat. Maybe you bump your thermostat from 76 to 90 from 9-3 (gotta give it time to cool back down before you get home). That cuts your power usage in half for six hours of the day, 22 days a month. At most that might save you $120 during the hot summer months.
I’m likely going to get solar panels, but building a pool is an expensive frustrating process, and I didn’t want to take on an additional project at the same time. The pool also has an electric heat pump so as long as the solar panel install is large enough solar panels will cover both needs.
Still need to work out the numbers on the solar panels so I can decide if I should buy them, or lease them.
Where do you get 40h from? Assuming living in a place that has long hot humid summers and cold winters, thereby needing AC for most of the year, that number should be closer to 100~200.
I live quite frugally otherwise (balking at other numbers in this thread) and $150 per month in climate cost increase for the daytimes sounds perfectly normal to me. During the hot summers I spent twice that when living in an apartment in the big city.
Also consider most people rent and have little ability to impact insulation and efficiency in their homes.
