hmm, ok I tried and nothing. here are the steps I followed.

1) with advanced power installed copied status-menu-plugins.ap to status-menu-plugins

2) in status menu plugins using vi did this...commented out one block of code (or should I just have erased it?) and put in the block mentioned.

[advanced-power.desktop]
X-Desktop-File=/usr/share/applications/hildon-status-menu/advanced-power.desktop
X-Status-Area-Permanent-Item=Special-Item-1
X-Status-Menu-Position=1

# [status-area-applet-battery.desktop]
# X-Desktop-File=/usr/share/applications/hildon-status-menu/status-area-applet-b
# X-Status-Area-Permanent-Item=Special-Item-1
# X-Status-Menu-Position=1

3) after nothing happened, rebooted device.

4) uninstalled and reinstalled advanced-power

did I do something very wrong?