In order to improve forwarding rate and connectivity rate between these nodes of the power distribution field network, an adaptive selection scheme for multi‐path parallel forwarding in dual‐mode heterogeneous field network is designed. First, the topological structure, the networking process and network maintenance mechanism of the field network with high speed power line broadband carrier and high speed micro‐power radio frequency communication capabilities are discussed. Second, a link measurement method is designed based on sliding window weighted average, and hybrid multi‐path routing table is calculated using a modified Bellman‐ford shortest path algorithm with limited hops. On this basis, a multi‐path parallel forwarding scheme is designed which has three modes of multi‐path load balancing forwarding, single‐path forwarding and multi‐path redundant forwarding. Finally, the field network is applied to the power distribution information collection system. The test results showed that the dual‐mode field network was more effective than the single‐mode field network in increasing the copying rate and shortening the copying time. © 2022 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.