Oct. 27--Delphi will receive a $6.7 million federal grant that the company's Kokomo-based engineers will use to make car batteries more efficient.

The Delphi-led project was one of 37 initiatives selected by the U.S. Department of Energy on Monday for energy sector innovation. It follows on the heels of a separate $89 million matching green car grant that Delphi was awarded during President Barack Obama's trip to Northern Indiana in August.

The latest round of funding is made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Troy, Mich.-based Delphi, a privately held independent company that employs 1,400 in Kokomo, will use the funds to develop new power electronics technology based on a process that can enable up to 50 percent more efficient power delivery by a battery to a vehicle's electric motor.

"This is technology that will improve switch modules that take a battery's DC energy and turn it into AC energy the motor needs to run," said Delphi spokeswoman Linda Ferries. "The module will be smaller, thinner and cheaper, with less energy wasted."

Delphi says the alliance will mean work for an existing handful of engineers.

Delphi will team with California-based International Rectifier, a tech company that works to improve power management in products as varied as cars and laptop computers. And those two will work with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a University of Tennessee-affiliated nonprofit, to bring the power electronics technology from the laboratory to the prototype stage.

About 3,700 qualifying concept papers were submitted to the DOE, including a broad spectrum of application areas and technical disciplines, for the $150 million budgeted for the awards.

The DOE said the product has the potential to be high-impact.

"This funding will enable Delphi to make the kind of high-reward investments in clean energy that are so critical to power our emerging green economy in Indiana," U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., said. "This will not only create middle-class green jobs for Hoosiers, but has the potential to dramatically lower energy use and reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil, as well."

Call Star reporter Tom Spalding at (317) 444-6202.

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