You bring up a good point however, its basically a generator, and it needs fuel. So even if its not much energy saved, saving any was crucial for them when they never knew where they could next get dylythium.
So even though leaving the lights on only costs a couple cents day, well if you’re traveling for 10 years, those couple bits of energy add up. Especially considering they did have a decent sized crew and children on top of it!
Not to mention that this was written in the 80s and 90s. Lighting was signficiantly more of the average person’s energy bill before LEDs so it made sense to the audience back then.
You bring up a good point however, its basically a generator, and it needs fuel. So even if its not much energy saved, saving any was crucial for them when they never knew where they could next get dylythium.
So even though leaving the lights on only costs a couple cents day, well if you’re traveling for 10 years, those couple bits of energy add up. Especially considering they did have a decent sized crew and children on top of it!
Not to mention that this was written in the 80s and 90s. Lighting was signficiantly more of the average person’s energy bill before LEDs so it made sense to the audience back then.