It is perhaps the opposite: trying powering the world, because you will not be able to stop circulation and secondary uses with a very long tether to simply power a single home, in which case anyone would buy an onshore wind turbine instead of an AWES.
And then the disappointment is less: we will be able to say that we were not able to power the world, which is less discouraging than saying that we were not able to power a single home.
It remains to power a boat or a ship, which is starting to happen and develop: this is where an AWE market can exist and deploy, even by using relatively short tethers.