Except although the movie does say battery. That's not the original plot device that was written. They were originally written as human based cpu computers. But some higher up thought people wouldn't understand "human processors" so just everytime you think about or watch the matrix again. Just think it's a poor mistranslation that made it into the movie, "processor->battery"
I'm paraphrasing, but Neo says "that's impossible (in reference to the Matrix) since it violates the laws of thermodynamics"
To which Morpheus replies "and where did you learn about the laws of thermodynamics?"
If you're in the Matrix, your knowledge of the Matrix would come from the Matrix itself which would have a bias towards falsifying information to preserve itself.