A search for goodness, kite, and tether gave me these results. The first few talk about goodness of fit:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/we.2343 LiDAR‐based characterization of mid‐altitude wind conditions for airborne wind energy systems)
https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documents/research/RAF-Historical-Society-Journals/Journal-54.pdf
Book by Saul Griffith:
In the meantime, however, the wind industry at large also made historic strides, and is now routinely deploying turbines at 4–5¢/kWh. In 2020, Makani shut down due to this evaporated advantage. The technology and execution were sound, but the industry found its own way to slash costs, just by the improvements that come deploying at massive scale. Despite the fact that Makani’s technology didn’t win the cost battle, it was part of an enormous movement and ecosystem of global innovators responsible for driving down costs and making wind, solar, and batteries competitive with fossil fuels.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/717149.pdf
AIR FORCE CAMBRIDGE RESEARCH LABORATORIES
S L. G. HANSCOM FIELD, BEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS
Proceedings, Sixth AFCRL Scientific
Balloon Symposium
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FibreTrac 1500 MacGregor’s Fibre Rope crane
low tension spooling and storage
significant increase in rope lifetime
@rschmehl: Do some yoyo designs have this? Are there drawbacks?
Perhaps doing this would make it easier to add more kite tethers to the drive shaft?
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Seems to me the technology, as implemented, just didn’t work well. Are we pretending it was just off by a few cents, and otherwise worked fine? If so it would be in use today, since costs could be cut over time in this as well. Sheesh!
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Witt Subsea Feasibility Study Video_31st Jan 2019
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This one may well be the future of AWE 
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Some discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of VAWTs and HAWTs:
An idea from the geodesic dome struck him: use pairs of cables that cross so they form triangles with the blade. It was Buckminster Fuller’s idea for his dome. It uses a pattern of self bracing triangles for maximum structural advantage. “I manipulated the cables in many configurations until I came across what I thought, was the correct number of cables crossing at the right locations,” says Lux.
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Like Led Zeppelin said, “The Song Remains the Same”. 