Neighbourhood Pool Watch: 9.8 ASIC choices: Avalon update

0. Introduction
I spent today getting this post ready for the opening of the Avalon bitcoin mining ASIC sales, but ran late. I hope you find it interesting, even if it was too late to influence your purchasing decisions. I attempted to a batch 2 Avalon bitcoin mining ASIC, but like many others was stymied by the store. After an hour and a half of trying I was unable to complete the purchase - I stopped trying only after the "Out of stock" message appeared.

This post builds on the previous ASIC choices posts, and addresses the concern that the Avalon ASICs use more power than initially estimated. Jeff Garzik posted a review of the unit and its power consumption, indicating it uses 620W over 50% more than initially estimated. Miners in Australia were concerned this could be a problem , and I imagine miners in many parts of Europe are similarly concerned. In this post I estimate network hashrates and Difficulties based on updated shipping information thanks to an anonymous contributor, and I estimate earnings for miners who receive their units either early or late in batch 1 or batch 2.

1. Assumptions

Arrivals are constant. Rather than modelling arrival times, I'm assuming a constant rate of hashes per second added to the network for each of the batches.
Batch 1: 100 units arrive before 1 week after CNY (domestic orders and a few foreign orders), the rest arrive from 24th Feb to 3rd March
Batch 2: 600 units arrive from March 12 to April 12 (I'm assuming shipping is streamlined and one takes a week for units to arrive).
Batch 3: 600 units arrive from April 12 to May 12
Exchange rate is US$20 / BTC
Electricity cost is US$0.25 per kWh
Initial difficulty = 3 200 000
Initial network hashrate =23 000,
I'm assuming no GPU miners leave since I didn't have time to work out how to include that feedback loop. That means this will underestimate earnings for batch 1. Batch 2 earning will be less affected.

2. Scenarios

Earnings assessments are based on units arriving on 3rd February (early batch 1), 24th February (late batch 1), March 12 (early batch 2) and April 12th (late batch 2).
The network hashrate is as above; in addition estimates of the network hashrate and Difficulty are charted for:

BFL delivers no ASIC units 12th May.
BFL delivers 1000 Ghps per day (~17 SC Singles per day) from 17th February to 12th May
BFL delivers 2000 Ghps per day (~33 SC Singles per day) from 17th February to 12th May

3. Conclusions

Depending on BFL's shipping schedule, the network hashrate could be from ~ 120 Thps to ~ 290Thps, with Difficulty reaching between 15 and 40 million before mid May, remembering that this is based in expensive electricity prices (US$0.25 per kWh) All batch 1 and early batch 2 owners should be able to earn enough coin by mid May to pay for their units, regardless of BFLs shipping schedule (up to 2Thps per day).

For late batch 2 owners, it's hard to tell since batch 4 information is not available and I can't extrapolate earnings past that date. I'm fairly sure late batch2 owners will be able to pay off their devices in the long term if BFL adds 0 to 1 Thps per day. If BFL adds 2 Thps per day I'm not so certain if an ROI can be achieved.

I hope this post was helpful for you - if you live in a country with expensive electricity and if Avalon does reopen batch 2, maybe something you read here will help you decide whether or not to buy. As for me, I'll be attempting to purchase again but am not sanguine about my chances. Feel free to tip me a donation to help me over this very sad time.