Morristown High Students Get Lessons in Power

Who are your heroes? Your parents? A musician? Maybe a sports star?

For senior Victoria Lin, it's Nikola Tesla, the father of the modern alternating current system of supplying electricity.

Luckily for Lin, she's a student in Anthony Danese's AP Physics class at , where representatives from came out on Wednesday for the first two of they hope future presentations on electricity, where it comes from and why it works.

Ed Jinks, an enginneer for JCP&L, said, "we think you need to know where your electricity comes from."

That can be as far as hundreds of miles, through the work of such pioneers as Tesla, whose AC system of transporting electricity proved much better at long distance transit than the system Thomas Edison championed, the Direct Current system. That could only be used over short distances.

But, times have changed drastically for power, especially here in Morristown. That was on display through a circa-late 1800s generator on Danese's desk. Usually on display at JCP&L's Morris Township headquarters, the antique apparently supplied all the electrical power to Morristown. Of course, one must take into consideration all streetlights were powered by gas at that time, and not everyone was powered up, said Senior Public Relations Coordinator Ron Morano.

Still, it's food for thought for a power hungry planet. Jinks noted in his presentation that JCP&L, which is part of the larger FirstEnergy electrical supply company, gets the majority of its power through non-renewable resources, such as coal (44.9 percent), natural gas (23.8 percent) and nuclear (19.6 percent). Renewable resources like hyrdo (6.1 percent) and non-hyrdo power like solar and wind (4.1 percent) make up a small fraction of the demand.

"That's something to think about," Jinks said. He said that, as demand continues, utility companies like JCP&L need to meet that demand, and the need for sources like coal are only going to go up, pending new and more cost-effective ways to bring technologies like wind and solar into the mainstream.

Danese said the presentation fascinated him. "You turn on a light and you don't think about where that power comes from," he said. "I've got a better appreciation from this."

Morano said this presentation was the first of its kind through JCP&L's "Speaker's Bureau," where the company goes out into the public in an attempt to demystify what they do and how it's done. The two presentations at Morristown High School Wednesday were the first of their kind, a collaboration between the utility company and the high school's Science Academy.

"We think there's an opportunity here for us to work with schools," he said. "We catered to this particular audience. They understand."

Why is that, Victoria Lin?

"My parents are electrical engineers and Tesla is one of my heroes," she said. "He's a heartthrob."