Lighting the parking lot is half a driving task and half a monitoring task. Lighting the gas station is a safety engineering task-the pump island directly below the canopy is within a designated danger area, and the lights themselves are part of the protection plan.

In parking lots, drivers need enough light to see the layout and see pedestrians walking out of the car cracks; and camera systems need enough uniform illumination throughout the entire field of view. The camera is more sensitive to the uniformity of degree than the human eye: a bright spot under the light and a dark area 20 meters away will degrade the quality of license plate capture. The pragmatic approach is: a higher average illumination, plus a uniformity that is no lower than the camera's loss of contrast threshold at any location. Only by arranging lights on columns or ceilings according to a lane grid, rather than just at entrances and exits, can this be really done.

The dominant factor at gas stations is the classification of hazardous areas defined around pump islands and tank breathing valves. Equipment installed in hazardous areas must bear the appropriate type of protection-in Europe usually the Ex mark under the ATEX Directive, or equivalent IECEx certification, and the temperature group must be adapted to the combustible liquid involved. This specification must come from an area division diagram issued by a qualified person, not from a product catalog.

Canopy lights also need to withstand oil, gas and flushing, and are installed in such a way that personnel do not have to stand above the fuel station where they are working during maintenance operations.