I believe this is related to the battery icon which is controlled by the xfce4 power manager. When I set the power manager to never show the icon...I do not get the extra space added after every suspend (on a freshly installed and updated Lubuntu 11.10 eeepc 1005ha).
Try this. First get rid of the extra space (if any) by resetting the panel.
Then open the XFCE Power Manager.
Code:
xfce4-power-manager-settings
Under 'System tray icon' select 'Never show icon' and click Close.
Now try suspending the computer and see if that fixes it.
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