In presence of stray current, the potential measurement is inevitably affected by strong spurious ohmic drop contribution, which cannot be eliminated by ordinary techniques, such as the well known on~off one, The “lateral gradient technique” appeared, from the theoretical standpoint, very attractive, being easy and fast. Rather than to give the true protection potential conditions, the power of the method rely on the information on over protection conditions; this has to be avoided in order to not damage the protection coating and to exclude hydrogen evolution. After a brief introduction of the methods, either the theoretical base or the practical use, the paper describes the instrument developed for the application of the method called gradient extrapolation and the practical results achieved on field testing, The technique, fully computerised, has been applied to buried pipelines and to concrete structures. This latter application, which is not illustrated here, requires a rather more complex interpretation. Field results on buried pipelines are presented and discussed.
Keywords: stray current, cathodic protection, potential measurement, lateral gradient technique, coating insulating resistance measurement, coating defect size measurement.