Insulation is your best investment. In so far as you are able over specify that (i.e. if you have an existing building that may limit what you can do, but don't stint around the pool walls / floor if that is not yet built).
Pool companies, IME, give no/little thought to energy saving. They provide "reliable" filtration pumps, not "low energy" ones. I've asked my pool company several times to recommend an energy efficient pump - their response: "Your pump works, why would you want to change it?".
They sell pools to people who can afford them, energy efficiency probably not a priority to their well heeled customers
Actually, their well heeled customers can EASILY afford the extra capital cost of energy efficient pumps, the pool company is missing out on some extra turnover.
Ho!Hum!
The sun shines more, and is hotter, in Summer, obviously. So if you specify your Solar Panels for Winter, or even Spring/Autumn, you will have too much heat in Summer. You will have to "dump" that heat somewhere. Possibly into your domestic hot water system? (but that needs far less than a pool, so probably a bad choice, but you could almost certainly have DHW for free in the Summer)
My pool is enclosed in a greenhouse type thing. Your building will be far more thermally efficient. My enclosure captures huge amounts of heat, and keeps the chilling wind away, and as a result my pool needs almost no external heating from June to end September. We heat if from April and stop swimming end October - mid November (because the cost of heating becomes expensive, and swimming with low ambient temperatures is not enjoyable).
We used about 1,000L of Oil last year from start of April to end of October (excluding an allowance for what we used for DHW; this figure might include a bit for central heating, but the house tends not to need heating after start of April, or until November).
1,000L of oil and an 80-90% efficient boiler would be around 7,808 - 8,786 kWh / season. I've added some kWh per month in the table below.
My pool is about 100 cu.M, surface area = 70 sq.M
A standard 20 evacuated tube 47 mm solar panel will give you the following average kWh/day for each of the 12 months (perhaps a bit less for you as you are fairly North
). 3rd column is my oil usage/month for last year converted to approx kWh/day [for that month]
Jan 1.19
Feb 2.24
Mar 3.95
Apr 6.19 102 (Some of this early usage is getting the pool from 50F to 80F! some may be oil for CH)
May 8.08 121
Jun 8.03 17
Jul 8.44 0
Aug 7.14 9
Sep 5.09 30
Oct 2.94 18
Nov 1.58
Dec 0.93
I reckon you need to do some heat-loss calculations
"
It will also have a retractable security cover fitted which should pretty much stop evaporation when the pool's not in use."
That will also reduce chemical usage as it will retain the chlorine better too.
