Structural health monitoring using wireless sensor networks has drawn considerable attention in recent years. The ease of deployment of tiny wireless devices that are coupled with sensors and actuators enhances the data collection process and makes prognostic and preventive maintenance of an infrastructure much easier. In this paper, the deployment problem is considered for finding node locations to reliably diagnose the health of a structure while consuming minimum energy during data collection. A simple shear structure is considered and modal analysis is performed. The example verifies the expectation that placing nodes further apart from each other reduces the mode shape errors but increases the energy consumption during data collection. A min–max, energy‐balanced routing tree and an optimal grid separation formulation are proposed that minimize the energy consumption as well as provide fine grain measurements. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.