Wow that's a big hit on the KW/HR rate. I guess it's having exactly the effect they intended. Get you to reduce the consumption.

If you're going to do work on the plumping anyway, it makes more sense to do the elbows. I would. Is all your plumbing already 2" diameter ?? If not I would upgrade to that and make sure the pump selected is 2" without step up adapters.

I see you're in CAL. Do you run 365 days a year ???

I also note that you mention solar. You want higher flow rates through a solar panel. The more the flow the more heat you will pick up. Do you get an abundance of hours of sunlight. Up here we never seem to get enough except in July and August and the rest of the shoulder season is a bit of a struggle to get enough solar gain so we need the higher flow rates throught the panels. If you cloud cover, wind loss etc is negative then it may reduce the benefits of the two speed pump, because you could have in on high for the solar. But that would give you about all the filtration hours you need in a day anyway.

Lots of things to think about.