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This paper introduces the concept of intermittently connected sensor networks where sensors are sleep most of time and become active randomly and rarely. In the networks, packet collision probability and power consumption can be reduced. Meanwhile, the delivery delay increases with the use of the low activation values. In this paper, we design the energy‐efficient intermittently connected sensor networks, considering this trade‐off of activation control. We first provide the algorithm that computes the optimal packet forwarding rule achieving the minimum delivery delay, which can be calculated using the activation rates. We then propose the activation rate control methods, which control the activation rates of the sensors based on the density of the sensors and/or the number of wake‐ups of sensors having relay packets. By doing this, we can improve the delay performance, while suppressing the increase in the packet collision probability and the power consumption of sensors. Through simulation experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our activation control methods in the intermittently connected sensor networks. © 2021 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]