How many amps can a standard 9V battery put out without a major voltage drop?

I was hoping to use 6 9V batteries in series to power something drawing around 2 or 2.5 amps. 53 or 54V would be ideal, but anything above 40V is actually acceptable for the source.

Would 6 batteries do the job? Would I have to use 12 or even more to handle the current? Or is this idea completely absurd anyway?

Not a chance - you can get the volts with series, but you can’t get over 1 amp, much less 2-2.5.
This page of tests http://www.powerstream.com/9V-Alkaline-tests.htm
shows that if you try to pull an amp (1000 ma) out of a 9 volt battery it will last for 90/1000 hours (5.4 minutes)
The long life of batteries in radios, etc., is due to drawing less than 100 ma, and at that rate delivers 3-4 hours (310 maH)

This entry was posted on Monday, September 5th, 2011 at 4:00 am and is filed under amps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “How many amps can a standard 9V battery put out without a major voltage drop?”

Mike1942f on September 5th, 2011 at 9:27 am

Not a chance - you can get the volts with series, but you can’t get over 1 amp, much less 2-2.5.
This page of tests http://www.powerstream.com/9V-Alkaline-tests.htm
shows that if you try to pull an amp (1000 ma) out of a 9 volt battery it will last for 90/1000 hours (5.4 minutes)
The long life of batteries in radios, etc., is due to drawing less than 100 ma, and at that rate delivers 3-4 hours (310 maH)
References :
David D on September 5th, 2011 at 9:50 am

Any current above 100 mA will cause a significant drop in voltage is a short amount of time.
References :
http://data.energizer.com/PDFs/522.pdf

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