Can we estimate the total power usage of the Bitcoin network?

[VentMine]

We monitor the total hashrate of course, but can we figure out the estimated power input for the network hashrate? One way is to assume the average wattage / GH but that is a big assumption as there are many variations in mining hardware out there.

There's a couple reasons why I am interested.
1) It would be another cool chart to plot on blockchain.info, because data is cool.
2) It would give us an accurate depiction of the energy footprint of the bitcoin network. Personally I think any project / endeavor / business / consumer in life should be conscious of its environmental footprint.
3) If we knew the historical power consumption in relation to bitcoin price and network hashrate, it would be easier to forecast the future difficulty for a given BTC price and chip efficiency. This would be useful for budgeting and forecasting future difficulty and BTC price when considering a significant investment in mining. For example if you look at the timeframe between January to September 2015, you see that the BTC price was relatively flat and stable around $260 USD and the network hashrate was also relatively flat and stable around 350,000 TH/s. I would assume that increase in difficulty slowed to a flatline because we reached an equilibrium here where mining operating costs was close to mining revenue. Investing in new hardware would have a very long payout period at this time. Of course, shortly after the BTC price started to increase and also new hardware which is more energy efficiency was introduced and so the network difficulty begins another growth period.

Can you think of any other reasons this information would be useful?
Cheers

[AgentofCoin]

...
2) It would give us an accurate depiction of the energy footprint of the bitcoin network. Personally I think any project / endeavor / business / consumer in life should be conscious of its environmental footprint.
...

My understanding is that majority of the hash comes from hydroelectric plants in Asia.
So the "environmental footprint" is low compared to other energy intensive systems.

Energy Consumption does not always equal Resource Depletion and/or Environmental Impacts.

[Kashim]

1 transaction in btc are like 30khw ~

[franky1]

at the moment the main ASIC everyone is using is the 13thash with 1.3kw/h

at 1.6exohash on the network
=~125,000 asics=~160mwatt/h
=~26mwatt/block

[JasonXG]

Yes you can since all you do is add up all the mining power or work out how much mining power is needed and that will be the minimum miners we can have or the system won't work. So yes it is entirely possible. The twonusers above me seem to know their stuff and habe worked out the power requirements and I have no reason to believe they wrong in anyway. Looks like a good estimate by me. Now just times that by the amount of blocks mined each day and you have your answer.

[MingLee]

You can get a rough minimum/maximum approximate. What you do is take the power required to run the most powerful miner, divide the network hashing rate by said miner, and then multiply the electricity by number of "units" available. Do the same but for the weakest yet viable unit available. That should give a rough idea for where the electricity usage should full under.

[countryfree]

I sure would like to get that info, but it's impossible to know. We don't even know how many miners there are! And how many computers does one miner has? We may also need to add some 5,000 nodes.

[Kprawn]

This will just give more ammunition to the millions of people out there, who cannot see that the fiat system use massive amounts of electricity

daily. It is just not grouped together to see the bigger picture. 

~ How many banks are there in the world?
~ How many branches do they have?
~ How much electricity do they use daily? { AirCon / Lights / computers / security .... }
~ How much electricity are being used to gather resources in mining and cutting down trees to create fiat money?
~ How much fuel are burned to transport it daily to ATM's and shops?
~ How much electricity are used to mint the coins and to print the money?

This whole issue is worthless, if you compare it to the fiat system..... 

[VentMine]

Yeah I'm not comparing to the fiat system, no doubt the power consumption is much larger there.

I just think it is good information to be aware of.

[odolvlobo]

You could estimate the amount of energy used by mining to be the value of the block reward divided by the average cost of energy.

#3 is not feasible because the hash rate also depends on the value of the block reward.

[shinratensei_]

at the moment the main ASIC everyone is using is the 13thash with 1.3kw/h

at 1.6exohash on the network
=~125,000 asics=~160mwatt/h
=~26mwatt/block

Totally it just encourages the asic type but what about the another brand of mining machine? I guess will more than it.

[Meuh6879]

a part of response : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558213.msg15640832#msg15640832

4 397 214 french peoples consumes the same power of the Bitcoin MINING during a year.
517 french peoples consumes the same power of the Bitcoin NODE network during 1 year.

1 french people consume 7 379 kWh in 1 year.

[franky1]

a part of response : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558213.msg15640832#msg15640832

4 397 214 french peoples consumes the same power of the Bitcoin MINING during a year.
517 french peoples consumes the same power of the Bitcoin NODE network during 1 year.

1 french people consume 7 379 kWh in 1 year.

1 french people consume 7 379 kWh in 1 year= average household uses 840watt an hour
seems about right when you think about a fridge/freezer on 24/7 and tv, computer, houselights, electric oven, dish/clothes washer on for certain amount of time which averages to that total.

but..
a node is just a computer ~450watt so for every 2 nodes is ~ 1 household(yes im rounding)..  so the real maths would be
5200 nodes @ 450watt = 2785 french households (nodes: 2340000watts / 840= 2785 households)

now as for the mining.
an asic is powered at ~1300watt = so for every asic is under 2 french people(yes i rounded)..so the real maths would be
125k asics @ 1.3kwatt = 193452 french households (asics: 162500000watts / 840= 193452 households)