Jacques Felberof Anderson Springs, Calif. got rolled recently. And it was not a pleasant experience.

"I'm afraid one of these days it's going to kock my house off the hill," she told the New York Times.

She was commenting after a night time quake that hit her home, a quake believe tied to nearby development of geothermal power resources.

The AltaRock Energy effort to pull energy out of hot rocks by injecting water deep underground has now been abandoned, thrilling the northern California residents worried sick by the earthquakes.

You may have read about similar problems in in Switzerland, where government officials recently shut down earthquake inducing geothermal projects.

AltaRock received $6 million from the U.S. DOE and $30 million from entrepreneur Vinod Khosla and the venture capital folks Kleiner Perkins, where Al Gore hangs his hat.

It seems that the process of fracturing hot rocks so that they can be bathed in water, creating steam, means setting off earth tremors that more than alarms folks who happen to be living overhead.

Consider this a pail of cold water dumped on visionaries who think every novel renewable energy idea that comes down the pike will be worth courting. There will be many mistakes, dead ends - and wasted millions. And sleepless nights. Just ask Jacque Felber.