I personally just start placing t2/3 power randomly around when I get to building it, away from other buildings.
You can still stick shields next to it this way, although you need to build slightly more shields if you want to cover them all.
The advantage of this is that it makes it harder for the opponent to kill all your power, spreading them out means no chain reactions, and more time is required to bomb different targets/drop on different targets. I also dislike putting my power next to anything which I don't want to get blown up like engies (because when you get to the t3 power stage buildpower is very important).