Myrtle Beach, SC
How Much Does Solar Cost in Myrtle Beach, SC?
The fees Santee Cooper and the City set, the incentives that come back, and the arithmetic that turns a quote into a net cost.
Get Solar Options
If you have done your research and want to speak with a solar professional, HyreSolar can help you explore available options.
What determines solar cost in Myrtle Beach
Four local factors move a Myrtle Beach quote more than panel brand.
First, the engineering: the City requires an engineer’s structural analysis of the existing roof and drawings sealed by a South Carolina professional engineer, which a coastal wind exposure makes more involved.
Second, location on the island: oceanfront homes need Community Appearance Board approval and VE flood-zone homes face stricter placement for equipment. Third, the roof itself, since the city’s median home dates from 1992.
Fourth, whether the installer is a Santee Cooper Solar Electric Trade Ally, because only Trade Ally installs earn the rebate.
System size is bounded by the utility, not just the roof: Santee Cooper allows the lesser of 20 kW or your estimated maximum monthly demand, and pays rebate on no more than 6 kW AC. For the size question, see the system size calculator.
Cost per watt in Myrtle Beach: why we do not print one
A price per watt is only useful if it comes from real local quotes. We need twelve sourced, dated Myrtle Beach-area quotes before we publish one, and we do not scale down a national average.
When you have quotes, divide each contract price by its DC watts yourself and compare like with like: same equipment class, same scope (roof work, electrical upgrades, battery) and same warranty terms. How cost per watt works.
Fixed and published costs for a Myrtle Beach system
| Item | Amount | Who sets it |
|---|---|---|
| Interconnection request application | $100, non-refundable, paid before review | Santee Cooper Solar Home manual |
| DG-25 rider customer charge | $10/month on top of your rate | Santee Cooper DG-25 |
| RG-25 customer charge (you pay it already) | $20.00/month; it is also part of the minimum bill | Santee Cooper RG-25 |
| Metering and standby fees | None since April 2025 | Santee Cooper 2025 rate study |
| Building and electrical permits, plan review | Valuation-based; ask Construction Services (843-918-1111) for the figure on your contract value | City of Myrtle Beach |
| Distribution upgrades, if the utility needs them | Case by case; DG-25 makes the customer liable for required upgrades | Santee Cooper DG-25 |
Retrieved 5 October 2026. We could not open the City’s current fee schedule, so its formula is not printed here.
Equipment, labor, roof and electrical work in a Myrtle Beach quote
Ask for these as separate lines. Equipment: the City wants modules, inverter and racking listed to UL 2703, UL 62109 or UL 1741, and Santee Cooper requires a UL 1741 inverter and IEEE 1547 compliance for the rebate.
Labor and engineering: the sealed drawings, the structural letter and the notarized letter at final inspection are real costs. Roof work: re-roofing before panels go on is cheaper than removing and reinstalling them later.
Electrical: the City’s required line diagram shows your service panel bus rating and main breaker; a panel too small for the solar breaker means an upgrade line.
A battery adds its own line and gets no Santee Cooper rebate. Costs and the case for one are on Myrtle Beach battery storage.
Incentives that lower a Myrtle Beach net cost
The Solar Home rebate pays $950 per kW AC, up to $5,700, and is mailed after Santee Cooper’s final acceptance testing, typically within six weeks.
The state credit is 25% of what you pay for an owned system; each year you claim the lesser of $3,500 or half your state liability and carry the rest forward up to ten years.
Whether the utility rebate reduces the amount the state credit is figured on is a question for your tax adviser; the scenarios below take the conservative route and figure the credit after the rebate. Full rules: Myrtle Beach solar incentives.
Three Myrtle Beach example scenarios: gross to net
| Scenario | Example size and contract | Santee Cooper rebate | Cost after rebate | SC credit (example liability) | Net cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small (example) | 4 kW AC · $15,000 | −$3,800 | $11,200 | −$2,800 over 2 years | $8,400 |
| Medium (example) | 6 kW AC · $25,000 | −$5,700 | $19,300 | −$4,825 over 2 years | $14,475 |
| Large (example) | 8 kW AC · $32,000 | −$5,700 | $26,300 | −$6,575 over 3 years | $19,725 |
HyreSolar arithmetic. Sizes and contract prices are examples, not Myrtle Beach prices. Credit figured as 25% of cost after rebate, claimed at $2,500 a year on an example state tax liability of $5,000. The rebate assumes your past-12-month peak demand is at least the rebated size.
The large example shows the rebate cap at work: 8 kW AC still earns $5,700. Run your own numbers in the payback calculator.
Myrtle Beach savings arithmetic under DG-25
The medium example with an example output of 7,800 kWh a year, 60% of it used in the hour it is produced. Both inputs are examples; your Santee Cooper interval data decides the real split.
| Line | Floor: base energy only | With Santee Cooper’s 2024 average price |
|---|---|---|
| Self-used solar | 4,680 kWh × 7.92¢ = $371 | 4,680 kWh × 11.38¢ = $533 |
| Exported solar | 3,120 kWh × 4.15¢ = $129 | $129 |
| DG-25 rider charge | −$120 | −$120 |
| Yearly bill reduction | $380 | $542 |
| Plus: 1 kW lower summer peak demand (example) | +$56 | +$56 |
The base rate excludes the fuel and other adjustments on your bill, so the true self-use value sits above the floor. The 11.38¢ average (EIA-861, 2024) also spreads customer and demand charges over each kWh, so it can overstate the value. Treat the two columns as a range.
How Santee Cooper’s rates move Myrtle Beach payback
Two levers matter more than the panels. The first is self-use: every kWh you export earns 4.15¢, while every kWh you avoid buying is worth the full energy price, so shifting laundry, dishwashing and pool pumps into sunny hours raises savings without new equipment.
The second is the demand charge: $8.00 per kW of your highest 3–6 p.m. hour from April to October. West-facing panels produce more in that window than south-facing ones, and a battery can cover it on cloudy afternoons.
Santee Cooper adjusts the export credit at least annually, so neither column above is fixed for 25 years. Before the cancellation period on your contract runs out, Santee Cooper will give rebate applicants its own annual savings estimate built from their interval data. Use it as the benchmark.
Comparing Myrtle Beach quotes and spotting hidden costs
Any proposal that credits every exported kWh at retail overstates savings here.
And sized no larger than 6 kW AC or your past-year peak demand.
The City requires all three; make sure they are not billed later.
Ask the price now. A 1992-era roof may need replacing within the panels’ life.
Ask for the cash price too. Dealer fee calculator.
Financing routes are on Myrtle Beach solar financing; the statewide picture is on solar cost in South Carolina; the city overview is solar in Myrtle Beach.
Questions
How much does a solar permit cost in Myrtle Beach?
What does Santee Cooper charge to connect solar?
How much does the Santee Cooper rebate take off a Myrtle Beach system?
Why might solar pay back more slowly in Myrtle Beach than in Columbia or Greenville?
Does a battery qualify for the Santee Cooper rebate?
Is the $10 rider charge permanent?
Written and audited by
HyreSolar Research
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the statute, the tariff, the code section, the federal filing or the manufacturer data sheet ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. That rule has cost us whole sections, and it is why the rest can be checked.
- 160
- primary sources read and cited
- 228
- figures with a retrieval date
- 115
- federal and state government sources
- 66
- researched pages published
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Statutes from the legislature’s own publishing system, federal data from the agency that collects it, code text from the adopted edition, manufacturer claims from the data sheet. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we go and read the source.
- Every figure carries its provenance. A named document and the date we retrieved it, so you can check it and so you know how old it is. Retrieval dates are not decoration: an EIA rate from May is a different fact from an EIA rate from August.
- We publish what we could not verify. Every research page carries a section naming the things we tried to establish and could not, and why. A paywalled standard, a state website that refused the request, a manufacturer that publishes no figure at all.
- We separate measurement from modeling from our own reasoning, and label which is which on the page. A laboratory measurement, an assumption inside a modeling tool and our own inference are three different kinds of claim and they are never presented as one.
- We do not sell solar, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of Last verified 5 October 2026. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.