Electronic – Measuring high voltage low current using a resistor and measuring the amps

currenthigh voltagemultimeter

Is it possible to measure a voltage beyond what your multimeter is capable of measuring by measuring the amps providing you know the resistance? Just wondering if the voltage would still harm the meter.

Best Answer

Meter specs tend tend to use 250v or 500 V rated parts. Exceeding these ratings by some margin may result is catastrophic failure to other parts when an arc bypasses the part.

There are 10:1 to 1000:1 probes rated to higher specs which must be observe/chosen.

Using high voltage rated resistors you can make a voltage R divider for DC and for AC use high voltage rated capacitors to make a C divider. enter image description here (not to scale) $1 rated for 6.1kV

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab