Abstract. Energy efficiency is a critical issue for battery-powered mobile devices in ad hoc networks. Failure of node or link allows re-routing and establishing a new path from source to destination which creates extra energy consumption of nodes, sparse network connectivity and a more likelihood occurrences of network partition. Routing based on energy related parameters is one of the important solutions to extend the lifetime of the network. In this paper, we are designing and evaluating a novel energy aware routing protocol called a balanced battery usage routing protocol (BBU) which uses residual energy, hop count and energy threshold as a cost metric to maximize network life time and distribute energy consumption of Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) based on Ad hoc on-demand Distance Vector (AODV). The new protocol is simulated using Network Simulator-2.34 and comparisons are made to analyze its performance based on network lifetime, delivery ratio, normalized routing overhead, standard deviation of residual energy of all Nodes and average end to end delay for different network scenarios. The results show that the new energy aware algorithm makes the network active for longer interval of time once it is established and fairly distribute energy consumption across nodes on the network.