STATE COLLEGE — Two local companies have been named to Inc. magazine’s prestigious list of the 5,000 fastest-growing businesses in America.

Schoolwires, headquartered in College Township at 320 Rolling Ridge Drive, logged a growth rate of 111 percent over the past three years to rank No. 2,233 out of the Inc. 5,000. And EnergyCAP, based at 110 Radnor Road in College Township, ranked at 3,340 with a three-year growth rate of 55 percent.

It’s Schoolwires’ fifth consecutive appearance on the list; two years it was among the Inc. 500. This is EnergyCAP’s fourth consecutive year on the list.

Both are young technology companies that have grown exponentially and hired dozens of workers locally through recession years when most companies struggled just to maintain status quo.

“We’re just honored and delighted to be on the list again this year. It’s a smaller and smaller group of companies able to be on the list that many times,” said Schoolwires CEO Ed Marflak.

Schoolwires, a graduate of the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County’s business incubation program, provides Internet-based information management software to 1,300 school districts nationwide. The company, founded in 2000, serves 8,000 schools and more than 8 million students, Marflak said. In 2007, Schoolwires’ first appearance on the Inc. 5,000, the company had 30 employees and $2.7 million in revenue.

Today, it has 115 employees and has generated $10.9 million in revenue.

“Our growth has come steadily, as we’ve reached a critical mass of customers across the country,” he said.

The company entered the Chinese market in 2009 and has created several new products that Marflak expects will continue to launch the company toward greater growth.

“We see multiple trends occurring in the marketplace that, for us, are positives,” Marflak said. “There’s a top-down policy focus on improving teaching effectiveness and learning outcomes. ... We also see pressures from bottom-up, with school districts looking to improve themselves, but inexpensively because of budget limitations.”

New technology drivers such as the iPad and e-readers are spurring a conversion to teaching with more digital content, another factor Marflak predicted would further drive Schoolwires’ growth.

“The sky’s the limit,” he said. “We have some bold plans where we want the company to go, and all factors are coming together to make that possible.”

Schoolwires plans to remain in the area, Marflak said.

“We feel a debt of gratitude to the community — it’s where we got our start,” he said. “We’ve also found we’re able to recruit top-quality talent within and to the State College community.”

The region will also remain the home of EnergyCAP, a maker of energy efficiency software, for years to come, said CEO Steve Heinz.

“We like the community,” Heinz said. “The kind of employee we like graduates from Penn State with a tech degree, goes to a big city for a couple of years, then realizes that maybe they’re getting paid more but the cost of living is also more expensive. They come back to State College for the pace of life, for the school and for the community atmosphere.”

Heinz founded the company in 1980, and sold it to Enron a few years later. After Enron’s 2001 bankruptcy, Heinz repurchased EnergyCAP and launched it in its current form in 2002.

“Most of our clients receive hundreds, or thousands, or even tens of thousands of utility bills a month ... which becomes impossible to manage,” Heinz said. “Our software tracks utility bills and helps an organization to find ways to reduce their cost.”

Rising global demand for energy has combined with increasing concern over climate change to make companies more eager to reduce their energy use, which has driven EnergyCAP’s growth, Heinz said.

The company had just two employees in 2002, but has grown from 26 employees and about $3 million in revenue in 2007 to 40 employees this year and $5.5 million in revenue in 2010.

“We’ve seen steady growth every year, even through the recession,” Heinz said. “We’ve found there’s always high value in helping to reducing energy use.”

Schoolwires and EnergyCAP join Restek, Remcom, Videon Central, QBC Diagnostics, Oberon, ThePrinters.com and Good Stewards Software as Centre County businesses that have made the Inc. 5,000 list since it was first published in 1982.

Cliff White can be reached at 235-3928.