Should West Palm Beach switch to a heat pump?
The math in West Palm Beach isn't close — a heat pump wins outright. $1,000 is what West Palm Beach would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. That premium is recovered through $334 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 3 years. That verdict holds specifically for West Palm Beach's own climate and rates, not a national average.
How cold West Palm Beach actually gets
Degree days tell the story here: West Palm Beach racks up 106 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, with 4633 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 48°F here (record low 46.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.63 for the standard class of unit this climate calls for. West Palm Beach's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium — a standard unit holds up fine. Source: NOAA station PALM BEACH INTERNATIONAL AIRP, 4.5 miles from West Palm Beach — the closest one on record.
West Palm Beach's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 74 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $621 a year. West Palm Beach's gas rate of 25.48 per Mcf, applied to the 1 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $955 a year, against 15.43¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 33 years, leaving the 15-year total $4,005 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in West Palm Beach heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. Switching saves about $347 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $5,500 spent up front comes back in about 15.9 years.
Where West Palm Beach ranks in this dataset
West Palm Beach lands at position 3141 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 228 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). 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 West Palm Beach
West Palm Beach, Florida is home to about 127,744 people, and the figures above are the same ones a local HVAC contractor uses to size and quote a system — this site doesn't guess where a real quote would land, it just tells you whether it's worth asking for one. Given the math above, West Palm Beach is a place worth lining up quotes ahead of a breakdown, not waiting for one.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page — the 3.63 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. The $2,000 federal credit baked into West Palm Beach's number is explained, with the before-and-after math, in the tax credit guide.