Energy is of primary importance in wireless sensor networks. By being able to estimate the energy consumption of the sensor nodes, applications and routing protocols are able to make informed decisions that increase the lifetime of the sensor network. However, it is in general not possible to measure the energy consumption on popular sensor node platforms. In this paper, we present and evaluate a softwarebased on-line energy estimation mechanism that estimates the energy consumption of a sensor node. We evaluate the mechanism by comparing the estimated energy consumption with the lifetime of capacitor-powered sensor nodes. By implementing and evaluating the X-MAC protocol, we show how software-based on-line energy estimation can be used to empirically evaluate the energy efficiency of sensor network protocols.