Will a heat pump pay off in North Myrtle Beach, SC?
This one's marginal in North Myrtle Beach: it only clears if you stay long enough. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Lower bills claw that back: about $244 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 14.4 years. Whether that's worth it in North Myrtle Beach depends on how many years you expect to own the place.
The climate behind North Myrtle Beach's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: North Myrtle Beach racks up 1853 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 2174 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 19.9°F here (record low 19.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.18 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. North Myrtle Beach needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. Source: NOAA station GRAND STRAND AIRPORT, 0.9 miles from North Myrtle Beach — the closest one on record.
The month-to-month numbers for North Myrtle Beach
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,475 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $538 a year. North Myrtle Beach's gas rate of 16.91 per Mcf, applied to the 19 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $782 a year, against 16.16¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 55.4 years, leaving the 15-year total $155 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in North Myrtle Beach has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $676 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 11.8 years.
Where North Myrtle Beach ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, North Myrtle Beach's winter puts it at rank 2513 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1858 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
What to do with this number in North Myrtle Beach
About 20,798 people live in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and every number on this page is what a contractor would actually work from when quoting a system here — the point isn't to replace that quote, it's to tell you whether to bother asking for one. Here, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where North Myrtle Beach's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how North Myrtle Beach's 3.18 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. North Myrtle Beach's 19.9°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.