When figuring out their abilities, I didn’t want to just go with the “Captain Planet checklist” of elements. I didn’t want any of them to feel over-specialized or underpowered. Every psionic flavor needed to feel versatile, practical, and open to exploration and development—each one offering its own answer to any problem (offense, defense, short- and long-range, traversal, utility, sensory). These abilities also had to reflect individual personalities and skill focuses: Shiv can turn anything into a high-frequency blade, while Balista can aim in any direction from any position.
One more thing. To answer why Raid named his TESLA coil based attack after Thomas EDISON. Edison used Alternating current to kill en elephant to demonstrate how dangerous it was compared to his preferred Direct current.