The paper deals with development of a control system for a power production plant comprising an airborne module in the form of a buoyant, rotating cylinder, whose rotation in a stream of wind induces the Magnus effect-based aerodynamic lift. Through a tether, the airborne module cyclically drives the generator fixed on the ground. The basis for the control system development is a previously conducted and published open-loop optimization study, whose objective was maximizing average power produced at the generator during a continuously repeatable operating cycle. Two control strategies are proposed, based on realistic generator and cylinder drives’ low-level control loops. An idealized version of the controllers, which matches the optimization plant model, is used to assess the strategies with respect to optimization benchmark. The assessment shows that the simpler and more robust strategy can approach the performance of the more sensitive strategy, which can closely match the optimization results.