be placed near these major consumption centres, very large tracts of land would be needed. Even without longitude offset, the size of a rectenna and associated safety zone at 53° latitude would be almost twice as large as at 30° latitude, taking the beam geometries of the United States' reference system as a guide (17). The long axis of the ellipse forming the safety zone (corresponding to a maximum microwave intensity of 1 mW/cm2 with the beam energy distribution defined in the United States' reference system) would become 44 km instead of 26 km with a short axis of 20 km. The area would grow from 400 to 730 km2 as shown in Figure 4. The situation would be worse if longitude offset had to be included, because most of the major consumption centres lie between 5°W and 10°E. Because of the high population density in the European region with the highest electrical power consumption, it would not be possible to place rectennas of the size defined in the United States' reference system near the consumer, without moving considerable numbers of people. As Figure 3 shows, European conditions are more favourable for placing rectennas offshore. More than 80% of the major consumption centres are located within 300 km of a coastline. In addition, large parts of the relevant offshore regions are relatively shallow, with depths of between 10m and 50m. Figure 4 RECEIVING AREA AS A FUNCTION OF LATITUDE
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