One's resist-based, one's defense-based... it's a comparison of apples and oranges.
If this is your first CoV character, it can be assumed you don't have much influence redside. Shield needs a lot of IO love to get soft-capped. Whether that's expensive or not, depends on what you want out of the set.
Shields. IMO on a set with no self-heal I prefer defense. You can get yourself up to around 30% def or so with little investment and some smart power selections.
Shields has a targeted AoE very high damage attack that basically works just like Lightning Rod. That's enough burst AoE to open up on a spawn of foes to kill all minions and LTs. Then there's even more AoE in attacks like Thunderstrike and Chain Induction.
Shields also gets a power that averages out to about 10% extra damage for every foe in melee range up to 10 foes. Having more damage never hurts.
My vote for Elec/SD.
Even with SOs it's fine. Just fill your inspiration tray before each missions with small purples. Pop one or two before tough fights or when you need to tank for your team.
Just invest in a FF proc in Thunderstrike (very cheap), and 3x slot your Hasten and your build up with recharge.
The next step if you want to be more efficient is to look a bit into IO sets to frankenslot at least LR and SC so they come back faster : easy to get something like 20% acc (dont need more as you gonna fire BU each time with those), 95% dmg, 25% end, 95% rech. So those 2 deal full dmg and come back much faster. It's really cheap to achieve with some parts of Multi-Strike, Eradication or Scirocco.
Good luck 
This will be my first CoV character (been at CoH for a while) and the Electric Melee set looked like a lot of fun. I like the thematic synergy of Electric Armor, but I kinda want an AoE monter (Shield Charge).
I was just wondering how are the two armors in comparison to one another? After browsing through the guides and forums, I'm familiar with the pros and cons of Electric Armor, but I couldn't find much for Shield Defense. Which has better survivability? What about for best synergy between the two powersets? I'd appreciate any input!
Sidenote: I'm not going to IO out this build so assume I'll just use single origin invention enhancements (or whatever they're called)