History

SEL was founded in Pullman, Washington in 1982 when Dr. Edmund O. Schweitzer III invented and marketed the first all-digital protective relay, reducing the cost and complexity of power protection and revolutionizing the industry. Schweitzer created the relay as a Ph.D. project while at Washington State University. The company shipped its first products to Otter Tail Power Company in Fergus Falls, Minnesota in 1984. In 1985, SEL built its first building and employed eleven people. The company continues to grow and today provides products and services in 123 countries and to the following industries:

SEL serves the electric power industry from its Pullman headquarters, where the company owns 130 acres, with 10 buildings on the site, including a new corporate headquarters, an event center and more than 200,000 square feet of manufacturing space. The company also has 42 additional domestic offices and 30 international locations in:

As a result, SEL offers unprecedented application assistance and customer support. The company employs more than 1,500 people worldwide.

E. O. Schweitzer Manufacturing, a division of SEL in Lake Zurich, Illinois, is the electric power industry's market leader in fault indicator technology. SEL also owns a manufacturing facility in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, where it builds protection panels and control enclosures for world markets. The company is building a new state-of-the-art facility in the city of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, where it will move its Mexico operations in the summer of 2008.

SEL continues to develop its spectrum of products and activities to include modeling power systems, analyzing events, planning upgrades, providing equipment, designing and delivering turnkey systems, securing communications, and finding new solutions for complex problems in the electric power industry.