In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), one of the major issues is to maximize the network lifetime. Since all sensor nodes directly send the data to the Base station, the energy requirement is very high. This reduces the lifetime of the network. One of the solutions is to partition the network into various clusters which avoids direct communication. In this paper we propose an Energy efficient Cluster Based Data Aggregation (ECBDA) scheme for sensor networks. In this algorithm, Cluster members send the data only to its corresponding local cluster head, there by communication overhead is reduced. Data generated from neighboring sensors are often redundant and highly correlated. So the cluster head performs data aggregation to reduce the redundant packet transmission. In our approach, clusters are formed in a non-periodic manner to avoid unnecessary setup message transmissions. Re-clustering is performed only when CH needs to balance the load among the nodes. The simulation results show that our approach effectively reduces the energy consumption and hence the network lifetime is also increased. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.