Tell ya' what...............see if they are willing to reimburse you 10 years worth of electric savings up front that the variable will produce for you. Heck...............even with a 2 speed pump. See if old hok'em will pony up!
And over that same 10 year period are you willing to bet rates will go up or down? Ours just went up!
Even if electricity were free, I would still run my 2 speed pump on low most of the time. It is 5x quieter on low, before with my single speed pump I had to turn it off when I had visitors as it was impossible to talk over.
I went with Variable Speed to have more control. The same reason I have dimmer switches on most of lights in my house. Electric savings is an added bonus.
Most old school pool builders think this way because they also believe that you need to have an absolute number of turnovers per day to keep the pool clean (like 4 or 5 turnovers per day). It has be proven that the concept of "turnovers" as it relates to pool cleanliness is not significant - if all you're looking at is water clarity and cleanliness, most pools only need two hours of pump runtime to make the water sufficiently clean such that the average pool owner can't tell the difference between a pool that's been run for two hours and one that has been run for more than two hours. If your adding on a saltwater chlorine generator, then extra pump runtime is typically needed to generate enough chlorination for sanitary water. Even then, most SWGs will operate as low as 15 GPM and their chlorine production rate is independent of flow rate so you can still run a pool pump quite slow.
It's not absolute either way on vsp. It depends on your situation. I only operate my pool for 14-16 weeks per year. I calculated my costs and it would take me years (many) to recoup the cost difference. If one has their pool open 8 months per year I'm sure it's worth it. Just my .02 for others who come along considering what type of pump to buy. But sound (or quiet should I say) is something I'd pay for. My pump is far enough from the pool that it's not an issue but I had an old AC unit at my former house. When it died I could not believe the noise difference.
Discontinued Hayward SP3202VSPND a good option?