For anyone interested. I found that the following sequence of commands will wake up the device reliably:
['adb', 'get-state']
['adb', 'kill-server']
['adb', 'start-server']
['adb', 'usb']
['adb', 'shell', 'input', 'keyevent', 'KEYCODE_WAKEUP']
['adb', 'wait-for-usb-device']