in the connections/PowerCMSConnection.php file, change line 9:
$PowerCMSConnection = mysql_pconnect($hostname_PowerCMSConnection, $username_PowerCMSConnection, $password_PowerCMSConnection) or trigger_error(mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR);
to:
$PowerCMSConnection = mysql_pconnect($hostname_PowerCMSConnection, $username_PowerCMSConnection, $password_PowerCMSConnection) or trigger_error(mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR);
mysql_set_charset('utf8',$PowerCMSConnection);
also make sure that any page you are out puting the power cms content, you use the utf-8 character set:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />