Hi Chain, thanks for the appreciation!!!; Your question may be of more interest in the more current “general” SmartTiles information and support Topic (SmartTiles Dashboard v5.6.1: New features (SHM), Bug Fixes, Diagnostics - Dec 11, 2015) – this Topic here is for customizing and hardware mounting; so feel welcome to re-ask the question at the link above!
But quick answer: SmartTiles does not make any calls to device.refresh() or device.poll() … it uses the “currentValue()” method which should be up to date with the latest value sent from to the Thing to the Hub and SmartThings Cloud (ummm… except for the Smart Weather Station Tile). So I don’t think there’s any battery drain.
Version 6 of SmartTiles (deep in development!) will track Events even more efficiently, but that’s for overall performance … the impact on Thing battery life should not be affected.
SmartThings doesn’t refresh a lot of devices, unfortunately, hence the somewhat popular “Pollster” SmartApp – though it may not help in every situation; and that possible could have battery impact.