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Actually the two LP-E6 batteries in the grip are connected in parallel, doubling the amps.
When using AA batteries they are connected in series to add up to the right voltage, and the amps for each of these batteies is as stated on them. I gather the small excess voltage is regulated by a diode, dropping it down to a safe voltage.

For very long exposure, recording at 1fps or so and averaging the frames in post should do the trick.

With this, you will also get better dynamic range (for example, when averaging 16 pics, the standard deviation of the noise should be 4 times lower, so you effectively get 2 stops of extra DR if I'm not overlooking something).

Just got back, been away for a couple of weeks. Just making sure I understand, you're saying this method would be about equal to long exposures? Say 1sec exposures 30 times over adds up to one 30sec exposure, useful for capturing a starry night sky, and with added DR? That would be a godsend if it works equally well.
I just can't run a proper test for a few days because of cloud cover in my area. Has anyone else done any testing on this?

Yes, that's what I'm seeing too. Works with the display dimmed, but not with it all the way off in my experience. Not an issue really, unless there's suddenly a 6 hours lightning storm and we wanna capture all of it. Not gonna happen even with the display off. 

Great work!

Two questions:
1. Live view powersave, would it be possible to have that during Bolt Trigger mode? I know a lightning storm may last only an hour so battery probably wouldn't run down during that. Just a thought cause the triggering seemed to stop on my 5d3 when I tried it.
2. Would there be any benefit or usability issues in using shutter speeds lower than 15fps? Is it possible to get a (near) 360 degree shutter as low as 1fps? Or 180 degree at 0.5fps? I'm thinking about both lightning capture at night on a tripod as well as something else I'm into - time lapse. In my experience the display gets sluggish at those low speeds though.

Not sure if this was covered, but you'll get more than 1920x1080 even in bolt trigger mode. All the way up to 3.5K in 2.72 widescreen (3584x1320) by hitting the zoom button once for 5X before activating the recorder. With a wide lens it'll cover a wide area with more pixels, excellent for lightning capture. The framing is off though, width-wise what you see on screen covers about 40% in from the right edge of whats actually captured.
Even with 15fps (following your settings above) I got that to work with a 1000x 32GB Lexar, capturing beautiful 3.5K raw stills. Might be a bit much if there's a lot of ongoing activity though, haven't fully tested that.

Silent shutter doesn't fire the mechanical shutter (unless I am mistaken).  Look under the photo menu in ML.
Just read the manual - guess it won't do full res.  Nevermind (though if you can tolerate less than 1fps, the high-res mode may be worth investigating).

http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Unified/UserGuide#silent-pictures

Ok, I see. I would actually take a full sensor picture every 5 or even 10 secs if I could get it, so going beyond 1fps is no hurdle for this purpose.
If I understand this correctly, silent low-res causes no mechanical movements but is only 1-2mpx in resolution. That would make it diffucult to pan across the recorded frames and still keep 1080p or better in the finished video. So that means high-res preferably with the whole 22mpx sensor recorded once every 5-10 seconds, or that's where I'm trying to get anyway, but without wearing out the shutter.
High-res silent seems like a good option even though it zigzags across the frame to get all of it, but with a 10 or even 20 second exposure there would be tearing and other issues with the interval between whole high-res frames climbing into minutes. It's a challenge, I know, and best bet so far seems to be 3.5k with a wider lens, cause that'll produce high-res images in a single shot each time, and with some room to pan in post. It's limited to use between dawn and dusk though, cause I'm not getting those extra long exposures in this mode.

- a combination of the intervalometer and silent shutter mode -

Without putting actuations and mechanical wear on the shutter? That's the reason I'm trying to do it in video mode, cause those actuations are adding up fast.

- framing on the LCD is a bit off what you get on the recording.

Shooting in 3,5K for a 1080p timelapse, the final framings and pans will be chosen or adjusted in post anyway.
Thanks for the tip, if this works I'm blown away.

If I could only get past that 1/30 exposure limit now, I could use this for night sky timelapses too, but for now that shutter-wear will have to be covered by my semi-retired older EOS body.

Edit: I see, in 3.5K the aspect snaps to 2.72 (Kinopanorama). And since 1320px is max vertical the only way to get a taller aspect is cropping the width of the picture. Is there any way to get more than 1320 lines? Hmm need wider glass. 

3.5K in crop mode at 1fps

I haven't seen that option (crop) anywhere in the menus so far, am I missing it or isn't it there?
Oh and btw: for nighttime timelapses I'm running into the 1/30 sec shutter limit, can't seem to sample light for longer than that pr. frame. When I'm doing 1fps time lapse it sure would be nice to get almost as long shutter time when it is that dark, like 0.8 sec or something.

possible to replace the SD Card slot in the 5D mk III with a UHS II compatible one and use this new Toshiba card for full sensor full res raw recording ?

That'd truly be a godsend for timelapsers, but I'm thinking the framerate for full res (or 4K) raw would be rather low compared to full motion 24/25/30 fps. The bitrate for that would be filling up a large card in a couple of minutes too.
I'd be happy with 0,5fps recording at 4K resolution without wearing out the shutter, and at a low timelapse framerate it would probably be around 10MB/sec. Now if I could only get long shutters in video, cause 1/30 sec shutter-openings is not very well suited for nighttime timelapse video which I'm focusing on these days.

Running a test-capture of raw video in 1920x1280 right now, to see how long it keeps running on a single charge. Testing this specifically with time-lapse in mind, so I've reduced the framerate to 1fps and it only writes about 5MB/sec to the Lexar 32GB 1000X CF-card I'm testing with in my 5d3. So far it's been half an hour and counting.
Just wondering about those 1280 lines I set it up with, is that the max possible? Would be sweet if it could run at this low framerate at full resolution, or maybe 4K. I realize that'd be a tall order for full motion video, but this is for timelapse instead of wearing out the shutter with stills shots. I'd be interested to see some thoughts on this.