Index / E11A

E11A

E11A — alkaline, 6 V, 10.2 x 15.5 mm. Not listed by Energizer, and nothing it still lists is the right voltage class for this compartment: E11AZ drops straight in, and runs 12 V — +100%, a higher voltage class. Not a substitute.

What fits the compartment, and what does not

Fit answers whether it enters the compartment. Voltage answers whether the circuit will notice. A cell that fits is not always a safe substitute.

One cell is the same size, and it is not the same voltage: E11AZ runs +100% against this one, a higher voltage class altogether. Whether that matters is a question about the device, not about the cell.

Unlisted, and nothing that fits is the right class

Energizer no longer lists E11A, and nothing listed that fits the compartment is the right voltage: E11AZ drops straight in, but it runs 12 V against this cell's 6 V — 100% away, a higher voltage class altogether. A device built for this cell is not built for that one, and the compartment accepting it says nothing about the circuit surviving it.

What the chemistry changes

Everything above answers size and voltage. What it cannot answer is chemistry, and 3 other kinds are in play here beside the alkaline this cell uses.

• Alkaline drops in voltage steadily as it empties, so a device calibrated for a flat discharge will drift as it goes.
• Carbon zinc carries a fraction of the capacity of an alkaline cell of the same size and leaks more readily when spent.
• Lithium runs at 1.5 V, the same nominal the alkaline and silver classes carry. Of the 26 lithium cells here whose envelope the maker publishes, 3 share that envelope with an alkaline or silver cell.
• Nickel-metal hydride is rechargeable and sits at 1.2 V, below the nominal of the primary cell whose slot it takes. It is never a drop-in for a primary cell no matter how well it fits, and a device that cuts off early will read it as flat.

Several cells in one can, and what that costs

This is not one cell. It is a stack sealed in one can, which is why the voltage is a multiple and the diameter is not. E11A at 6 V is 4 cells of 1.5 V in series.

A series stack is only as good as its worst cell. One weak element takes the whole can down, and nothing on the outside shows which one it was. Published capacity 38 mAh for the whole stack, not per cell: capacity does not add in series, voltage does. 6 cells measure close enough to compare against it in the Energizer data this site reads, and 6 of them are still listed.

• The nearest is E11AZ: it drops straight in and runs 12 V, wrong class.
• By stored energy it stands 2 of 2 in its envelope, at 228 milliwatt-hours.
• Energizer files it for North America, which is where the part is sold rather than where the cell will work.
• Energizer no longer lists E11A at all, so whatever goes into that compartment next will be a substitution rather than a replacement.

Drawn to scale

Every published figure

9 figures are published and 3 fields left blank, among them volume, energy density and impedance. It reached shelves as E11A.

1 row in the table is not the maker's but ours: stored energy. Everything else is reproduced without change.

Where the capacity figure stops counting

A capacity figure means nothing without the voltage it was counted to. For E11A the maker counts down to 3 V, and 1 published figure sits beside it.

Cutoff voltage

3 V. The published capacity is counted down to this voltage; a device that quits higher up sees less than the whole figure.

Where the part is filed

North America. That is a statement about the maker's distribution and not about where the cell works.

Is that a lot of energy?

It holds the least of the 2 cells measured in this shell: 228 milliwatt-hours against 456 for the one directly above. Same compartment, different amount of chemistry inside it. The capacity figure is measured down to 3 V, below which the maker stops counting.

A width the catalog keeps returning to

10.2 mm is a width this catalog keeps coming back to: 9 cylinders sit within half a millimeter of it, E11A included.

• 1.2H1 — 10.5 x 44.5 mm, 1.2 V, nickel-metal hydride.
• 1811A — 10.3 x 28.5 mm, 12 V, alkaline.
• FR03 — 10.5 x 44.5 mm, 1.5 V, lithium.
• 6 of those ones are still listed. 6 of the 69 cylinders share its 6 V exactly.

Nothing else is stamped on this one

Nothing else is printed on E11A in the Energizer data this site reads: one designation, no trade marking, no part number. E11AZ in the same envelope is named otherwise, so a marking you are holding is more likely theirs.

The cell that differs only in depth

The code says the size, so the cells that get confused with E11A are the ones that keep its diameter and change its depth. 8 cells share this diameter at depths from 28.5 to 44.5 mm, and every one of them enters the same opening.

It stands 2 of 2 in this envelope by stored energy. On a scale the difference shows before it shows on a caliper: this one weighs 4 g.

• 1811A — same diameter, 28.5 mm tall against this cell's 15.5: 13 mm deeper, which neither designation carries.
• 3-312 — same diameter, 42.8 mm tall against this cell's 15.5: 27.3 mm deeper, which neither designation carries.
• 3-312I — same diameter, 43.3 mm tall against this cell's 15.5: 27.8 mm deeper, which neither designation carries.
• 3-0411 — 11.4 mm across at 1.5 V against 10.2 mm here, 1.2 mm apart: too wide to enter in this holder.

What this page cannot tell you

3 of the 7 fields this site reads are empty for E11A: volume, impedance and operating temperature. Everything computed from them is absent from this page rather than estimated.

The blanks are the same in all 1 record behind this designation, so they are the catalog's silence and not a merge losing a value. What is not missing is the envelope: 10.2 x 15.5 mm, published and checked against the designation itself.

• No volume — so this page cannot tell you energy per cubic centimeter, which is how cells of different shapes are compared here.
• No impedance — so this page cannot tell you whether the cell can drive a pulse, which is the whole question in a watch or a sensor.
• No operating temperature — so this page cannot tell you whether the maker claims anything at all below freezing.

Before you swap anything

Everything here is computed from published dimensions and nominal voltages. That answers whether a cell enters the compartment and whether the voltage matches on paper. It does not answer what your device does with the difference, and it cannot: a cell that fits can still be the wrong cell.

One more limit, and it is the biggest. This site reads a single manufacturer’s catalog. When a page says a designation is not listed, that means Energizer no longer offers a part under it — not that nobody makes the cell. Other makers may still sell it, and for common sizes they usually do.

A voltage difference is one relation between two cells, and this page prints it from the cell it is about — in every table on the page, including the one listing cells no longer made. A figure always belongs to the cell whose voltage is printed beside it: a cell that runs lower than this one carries a minus here, one that runs higher carries a plus, and two cells at the same nominal voltage carry zero. Meet the same pair on the other cell’s page and the sign is the other one, with the figure taken against that cell instead of this one; where the two run at the same voltage, both pages print zero. The class beside the figure is not read off that figure directly. It is decided on the gap itself, taken against the higher of the two nominal voltages, so one pair of cells gets one class whichever page you meet it on: counted from this side the boundary of the class that still runs falls at 20.0% below and 25.0% above, which is the same gap divided once by the larger nominal and once by the smaller. What genuinely differs between the two directions is the consequence, and the words carry it: a cell that runs low makes a calibrated instrument read below true, and a cell that runs high makes it read above.

3 things this site cannot see. Whether the contacts reach a shorter cell. Whether the device was calibrated for a chemistry that holds its voltage flat, which silver oxide does and alkaline does not. Whether the equipment tolerates the higher current a different chemistry can deliver. Rechargeable cells are never a drop-in for primary cells regardless of size.

Cells measured next to this one

1 cell sits at exactly this size, and 8 more share the diameter at other depths. The first group is interchangeable by measurement; the second is not.

• E11AZ — 10.2 x 15.5 mm, 12 V
• 1811A — 10.3 x 28.5 mm, 12 V
• 3-312 — 10.3 x 42.8 mm, 1.5 V
• 3-312I — 10.5 x 43.3 mm, 1.5 V
• 1.2H1 — 10.5 x 44.5 mm, 1.2 V

Where these numbers come from

Dimensions, voltages, chemistries and capacities are published by the manufacturer and reproduced without change. Everything else on the page is ours, computed from those figures: whether one cell fits where another sat, how far apart their voltages are, stored energy and energy per cubic centimeter, the rank within a shell, and the check of the designation against the measured size.

Fit is decided within 0.3 mm on every axis, which is the order of a contact spring's travel. Voltage classes are decided by consequence, not by roundness, and they are decided on the gap between two nominal voltages taken against the higher of the two: 2.0% or less of it is the same working voltage, 6.0% starts to matter to a calibrated instrument, and past 20.0% it is a different class altogether. Measuring the gap against the higher figure is what makes the verdict the same from either cell’s page, while the printed percentage stays counted from the cell you are reading about. Cells with identical stored energy share a rank instead of being ordered arbitrarily.

Ranking uses capacity times nominal voltage, because capacity alone is not comparable across chemistries: 150 mAh at 3 V is twice the energy of 150 mAh at 1.5 V. Neighbors are chosen by measurement and never alphabetically, because two cells filed next to each other by name usually have nothing in common. A blank in any table means the maker publishes no figure, which is not the same as zero.

Source: Energizer technical data, retrieved 1 September 2026.

The record behind this page

Every figure on this page comes from one catalog record, number 762, and it is linked below. The sheet is the document the dimensions, voltage and capacity were read out of.

1. [1] Energizer catalog record 762, obsolete in the snapshot. Technical data sheet: e11a.pdf.

Every figure above is reproduced from those records without change; the comparisons are ours and are described on the method page. Snapshot: Energizer technical data, retrieved 1 September 2026.

Putting this on a forum or a repair page? The same answer without the site around it — fit, voltage, chemistry and the limits that go with them — is at /embed/e11a/. It loads nothing from anywhere else. Paste this:

<iframe src="https://batterycross.com/embed/e11a/" width="100%" height="520" loading="lazy" title="E11A replacements"></iframe>