Summary Alternating current (AC) interference on pipelines derived from adjacent overhead AC power transmission systems can lead to severe AC corrosion, which will result in the perforation and leakage of buried pipelines and thus has attracted more and more attention to extensive research. Induced AC voltage is one of the important factors for AC corrosion risk assessment, and it has been generally accepted that the induced AC voltage of pipelines to remote earth is the driving force for AC corrosion. However, during the field measurement of induced AC voltage, it is not quite a simple task to determine the ‘true’ position of remote earth for diversified testing conditions. In this work, the effects of multiple contributing factors on the electric field distribution of AC interference are investigated, which include unbalanced current, soil resistivity, coating resistivity, pipeline-to-power line distance, and the length of mitigation wire. Furthermore, logically suitable locations for ‘remote earth’ in different scenarios have been suggested with the help of numerical simulation, which can be referenced to improve the measuring accuracy of induced AC voltage. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.