To assess the local and regional impacts of wind energy development, we have implemented a wind farm parameterization into the Weather Research and Forecasting model. The Fitch et a. parameterization (MWR, 2012a, 2012b) is available with every WRF download since version 3.3. In simulations of the CASES-99 GABLS case, the wind farm wake varies throughout the diurnal cycle, with the maximum downwind surface temperature increases ~ 0.5K at night (MWR, 2013) consistent with observations. Comparisons between this elevated drag model and climate simulations representing wind farms simply with enhanced surface roughness show nearly the opposite local impacts on surface temperature (Fitch et al. J Climate 2013). Even in the midst of a very large wind farm, the type of crop surrounding the turbines can impact the wind resource (Vanderwende and Lundquist BLM 2016). Comparisons of these simulations with large-eddy simulations suggest that inclusion of turbine-generated turbulence is essential (Vanderwende et al. JAMES 2016). Using wind farm power production data, we have shown that the use of the wind farm parameterization improves forecasts of power production (Lee and Lundquist GMD 2017). Large-scale climate impacts of wind energy deployment are still being explored (Emanuel et al. 2016). We have extended our wake analysis work to validate modeling tools by comparison to field data (Lee and Lundquist 2017 GMD, Lee and Lundquist 2017 BLM, Siedersleben et al. 2018 MZ, Siedersleben et al. 2018 ERL, and Siedersleben et al. 2020 GMD), tested a rotor-equivalent wind speed formulation in (Redfern et al. 2019 MWR), provided the scientific community guidance on best approaches for simulating wind plant wakes (Tomaszewski and Lundquist 2020 GMD), demonstrated how wakes can affect weather like thunderstorms (Tomaszewski and Lundquist 2021 WES), quantified the financial impact of wakes on neighboring wind farms (Lundquist et al. 2019 Nature Energy), and demonstrated the effects of wakes on long-term observational capabilities (Bodini et al. 2021 Scientific Reports).