$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.

A friend's pool in England is almost entirely sustained with solar panels: radiant ones to heat the water (as required), and PV to run the pumps.

It seems like a no-brainer to do this in Arizona, but I don't know the economics.

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.

Have you considered adding solar panels to your house?

Yes, I’ve been in talks with a Tesla rep. Need to run the numbers on buying vs leasing, and get a few other quotes.

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.

It’s not uncommon to pay $3-400 for your electrify per month because of AC in the Midwest (for three months a year, that is)

> I spend 150$+ per month on AC and heat because of the pandemic. I spent ~30$ in gas a month commuting. I could even walk if my bike didn't work.

Work from home doesn't mean you have to literally work from home. There are plenty of places you can work from, ranging from free like libraries or parks, to paid like coffee shops and co-working spaces. You can get your employer to pay for the latter.

> Once you optimize your job to be close to your home, many of the benefits of wfh disappear.

Those optimizations become liabilities if you get a new job elsewhere.

I'm not a mobile person, I've traveled the world but lived in one city my whole life. I've done the 90 minute commute, I've driven all over. This role I picked especially because of the location. Work fits my life not the other way around.

> Once you optimize your job to be close to your home, many of the benefits of wfh disappear.

Alternative framing: your life has been constrained by your career expectation of working in an office; you've optimised around that and found a local maximum.

Work-from-home doesn't remove that local maximum from you, but it creates an opening to find a higher maximum.

Only if you're an extrovert. As an introvert I love people throwing stuff over the wall to me and I never have to deal with office gossip, politics, or other shenanigans.

If you're paying rents/mortgages close to your work, those savings from AC probably disappear pretty quickly.

For people who like where they live that isn't necessarily a factor. Even if I was fully remote I don't think I'd move

I live in a medium/low col city. Not everywhere is NYC or Cali

My landlord noticed electric bill going up (combined with rent) and a lightbulb moment happened when we realized we've all been at home over the winter and its 220+ hours more of heat and other appliances every month.

I have a similar situation with heating. Two months of sub zero C this winter didn't help either.

What's funny about parent's remark?