How to Verify Battery Voltage

If you've ever needed to verify that a battery had it's proper voltage or wanted to see if that random battery you found is dead or not, this will teach you exactly how to do that!

DISCLAIMER/WARNING: Ensure that your multimeter is rated to handle the voltages of your battery. Damage to your equipment and/or injury can occur.

These procedures will only give you the battery's off-load value.

1. Battery (Battery Voltage can not exceed voltage limit of Multimeter)
2. Digital Multimeter
3. (2) Multimeter Leads (red and black)

Any battery, multimeter, and leads will work. All of these items vary greatly in price. Multimeters and leads can be found anywhere that electronic supplies are sold.

Plug your black lead into the black port labeled "COM" on your multimeter.

Plug your red lead into the red port labeled "V" for "Volts" on your multimeter.

Rotate the knob to DC Volts. This is the position labeled "V" with a stacked solid and dotted line above it. Moving your knob to this position will turn on the multimeter and ready the multimeter for reading DC Voltages.

WARNING: Before proceeding, ensure that your Multimeter is rated to handle the amount of volts that you expect to measure on the battery. This will be written at the bottom of your multimeter. You can see that this multimeter is rated up to 1000 volts.

Touch the metal tip of your red lead to the node on the positive side of your battery. The positive side will usually be labeled with a "+" symbol.

NOTE: If you connect your leads backwards (red lead to negative & black to positive) you will still get an accurate reading, it will just display a negative number.

While maintaining contact between your red lead and positive battery node, touch the metal tip of your black lead to the node on the negative side of your battery. The negative side will usually be labeled with a "-" symbol.

Now that your multimeter is attached to the positive and negative sides of the battery it will show the battery's voltage reading. Compare your reading to the battery's intended voltage. The intended voltage is usually printed on the battery. You can see that this reading is 9.15 Volts DC and the battery that we are measuring has an intended voltage of 9 Volts DC. This verifies that our battery is good and has correct voltage in it.

NOTE: If your voltage is a little high or low (+/- ~0.3 Volts) this is normal. Battery variations and multimeter calibrations can cause fluctuations in measurements.

This video walks you through all the steps