This document discusses, among other things, a system providing a battery charge indicator for an implantable medical device, such as using a lithium/carbon monofluoride (CFx) or other battery. Capacity vs. voltage data from a separate characterizing battery into a characterizing load impedance is stored in memory, such as in a lookup table or as a regression equation fitted to the data. For the actual battery of interest, then, a battery terminal voltage and a corresponding load current are measured, and a load impedance is calculated. A translation is performed to make the measured battery voltage and the characterizing capacity vs. voltage data comparable, so that a capacity reading can be obtained.