A Simple GNOME Panel Applet in Python
I built a little panel applet in Python that shows the current battery percentage and wattage. (Yes, I know the battery applet can show percentage, but it won't show the current power consumption.)
My applet can be used as-is, or would be easy to adapt to show any text on the panel. The install.sh script copies the files to the necessary locations to make it show up in the applets list.