With acknowledgment to Parnote for this:
The November magazine contains reference to Gnome Power Manager as a replacement for the buggy onboard battery monitor in the LXDE: Hints and Tips section, and references the September issue for ways to get it into your startup list. A little later in the November H & T's there is a little nugget on an alternate way to get applications to autostart. By combining the two ideas....
Get gnome power manager from the repo's.
Open /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart as root, and add the line:
@gnome-power-manager (Make sure the file has a blank line as its last entry, and save.)
Close out and reboot. There should now be an accurate working battery monitor in your LXDE taskbar, with the added benefits of settings for stand-by and hibernation from Preferences.
Thank you Parnote.