Abstract: Clustering routing protocol for wireless sensor network (WSN) have been growing in recent years. In view of the load balance problem during network clustering for WSN, a distributed and directed clustering algorithm based on load balance is proposed (DDC). In DDC, the pre-evaluation factors which are used for pre-evaluating the energy level and load ability for each node in the next round are presented. During the clustering per round, the whole network is firstly divided into appropriate subareas by the energy pre-evaluation factor, and then the cluster head of each subarea is selected according to the load balance pre-evaluation factor. DDC effectively ensures that the network energy consumption can be decentralized uniformly to every subarea, and that the load for each node in subarea can be balanced. Those characteristics of DDC can organically combine the network energy with the load of node so as to prolong the lifetime of WSN to the greatest extent. The simulation experiments demonstrate that DDC significantly outperforms some similar algorithms such as LEAH and DCHS in terms of energy efficiency, and the load of each node in WSN is more balanced. In the energy-heterogeneous network environments, DDC still has very good adaptability and expandability.