ZELIENOPLE — There might not be many Butler County companies that ship to more than 30 nations and have customers including the United States military, industries in Uruguay and the transportation authority of Philadelphia.

But those are just a handful of the customers that Power Conversion Technologies serves, according to President Cathy Chis.

The company began in 1991, in the dining room of the Chis home in Harmony.

“I met Mihai (Chis) in West Virginia,” Cathy Chis said. “We actually went to work for another firm about the same time, and their staff had just walked out and stolen their designs and started a competitive concern so we kind of had a mess to clean up there.

“I was sales manager and he was chief engineer, so we pretty much had to work night and day to put the place back together and that’s how we got together.”

The two eventually came to the Harmony area, and Mihai began working at different companies.

“He was dissatisfied with the level of innovation in the companies he was in, and so we said ... we’ll open up our own place,” she said.

With Mihai Chis’ knowledge and Cathy Chis’ bachelor’s in electrical engineering and master’s in business administration, the two were well-equipped for success.

“(Mihai’s) got three master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering fields,” she said. “He actually went to the Russian naval academy, and he made perfect grades for six years. He’s a math kid ... they knew when he was little that he was a math kid, and he lived with his uncle for a time.

“His uncle would have to step over him on the way to the bathroom at night, and he would kick Mihai awake and ask him a math problem in the middle of the night.”

Mihai Chis always got the answer right, of course.

He also worked as a technical diplomat in Romania and traveled all over the Eastern bloc before the Iron Curtain fell, his wife said. He also worked with Siberian oil drillers and has worked as an international expert in the field.

Although her husband owns the company with her, he has retired.

At first, the company primarily served the U.S. military, but it has since diversified its customer base. About 70 percent to 80 percent of the company’s annual sales are not from the military.

But a lack of a military budget in 2013 created a small problem for the industry, Cathy Chis said.

“They didn’t spend anything all year because nobody knew what they could spend. And they finally figured it out in like September and tried to buy everything so it was a real nightmare,” she said. “The U.S. government is a teeny weeny customer for us now.”

There are few companies in the world who make similar products, Cathy Chis said.

“There’s probably only a couple firms in the world that specialize in the level of power that we handle, so it’s big stuff,” she said.

The company provides power conversion products ranging from 10 kilowatts to 15 megawatts, including products that transform direct current (DC) energy to alternating current (AC) energy. Other major product lines include battery chargers and frequency converters.

One example of the company’s power conversion technology is a DC/AC inverter sold to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in Philadelphia.

This project is a response to Hurricane Sandy and is a preemptive measure if an emergency situation arises on the subway. The inverter would fit onto the emergency pump stations of the subway, and in the event of a storm surge, the PCTI technology switches on.

Another project is one that Cathy Chis does not even know what the power conversion will be used for.

It’s a 1-megawatt power supply that will be sent to Pearl Harbor. While Cathy Chis might have her guesses as to the intended use, the military cannot disclose that information to the company, she said.

But it’s not only American armed forces or industries that receive products from PCTI.

“We do pretty well with exports,” Cathy Chis said. “Sometimes exports are like 70 percent (of sales), and sometimes they’re like 30 (percent) to 40 percent.”

The company does have to be concerned if the products will be used in a weapons system. While the company has made power conversion products for the Dutch and Ecuadorian armed forces, there are certain countries that business is more limited with.

“Some projects we can’t even quote,” Cathy Chis said. “We can’t even quote directly to China, or indirectly (for military supplies).”

But those quotes can run fairly high.

For example, the technology sent to Pearl Harbor cost $230,000, she said.

Around half of the company’s projects are similar to something that it has already done, and another 30 percent are repeats of completed technology.

But the remaining 20 percent is typically unusual or new projects that will require research and development work, which can be quite a headache.

“Everything we do is fairly customized,” she said.

Because of this, some of the company’s supplies have to be ordered on a project-to-project basis. The company has about 100 to 150 regular vendors, and most of these are from the United States. However, the semiconductors used by the company typically come from companies outside of the U.S.

The circuit boards are made in-house since the company owns the rights to special technology called DSP, digital signal processing.

“Most of our competitors do not use this, and it’s not a universal board that can be used in all different kinds of equipment,” Cathy Chis said.

“We can use this in a lot of different kinds of equipment, and we just change the software on the DSP chip. We’re on our sixth generation of this ... If you tried to reverse engineer it, it’ll destroy whatever is on that chip.”

Due to the global market for power conversion, the company relies primarily on search engine optimization for getting the word out about the company.

“Because we’re such a specialized niche, we can’t really send a sales force out to the whole world,” she said.

Right now, the company is experiencing an “onslaught” of orders, Cathy Chis said.

That growth already led the company to move from Harmony to Zelienople in 2014 in search of more space, but she noted the industry can have a hard time finding people to hire. She anticipates the company will look for more laborers and possibly engineers in the coming years.

But their customers still keep coming.

“It’s a usual day if we get a call from the Navy or the Air Force,” Cathy Chis said. “Pretty good for Zelienople.”