what is the estimated power consumption of the entire network?

[koryu]

i am doing some calculations and i wonder what the total power consumption for the entire bitcoin mining is.

we are currently at 50,000,000 gh/s. i read that the most efficient miners mine at 0.7-1.1 watt per hour per gh.
i think with decent cooling you need at least 1 watt. that would be a minimum of 50,000kw/h.

did i make any mistake in my calculation? what do you think is the average watt per gh of the current network / the total power consumption?

thx in advance

[imamanandyou]

I expect most of the old ASIC still hashing with effeciency 5-10Wh for gh/s
So most optimistic would be 100,000 KW/h.

[koryu]

I expect most of the old ASIC still hashing with effeciency 5-10Wh for gh/s
So most optimistic would be 100,000 KW/h.

yes, imo miners are shut down when the electricity cost is higher than the generated btc amount. i am just calculating what the maximum profitable W/gh is. but its a bit difficult because it also depends on the electricity cost on different locations and btc's value.
anyway its possible to calculate a maximum and minimum total consumption.


/edit:

my calculation for maximum profitable w/gh for different electricity cost (setting btc price as constant 440$) :
_______________________________________

w/gh	|price per kW/h
13.2	|0.10$
8.8	|0.15$
6.6	|0.20$
5.28	|0.25$
4.4	|0.30$

_______________________________________

a maxmimum total power consumption (when all miners would run at 6.6 W/GH) is 330,000 kW/h
so the network should run between 50,000-330,000 kW/h.

hope i didnt make any mistake in the table  

[davejh]

i am doing some calculations and i wonder what the total power consumption for the entire bitcoin mining is.

we are currently at 50,000,000 gh/s. i read that the most efficient miners mine at 0.7-1.1 watt per hour per gh.
i think with decent cooling you need at least 1 watt. that would be a minimum of 50,000kw/h.

did i make any mistake in my calculation? what do you think is the average watt per gh of the current network / the total power consumption?

thx in advance

Your calculation gives the amount of power for one hour of operation. For the daily power you need to multiply by 24.

I think your numbers are probably too optimistic too. The hashing rate is now closer to 60 PH/s and while the newer hardware is very efficient there's a lot of older hardware that is less so. I've been trying to come up with some good estimates (I've guessed at closer to 1.5 W/GH/s) because the energy costs have a pretty significant impact on the viability of mining and the amount of money that gets freed up from the block rewards to pay for next generation hardware (http://hashingit.com/13-megawatts-of-mining)