We have two of them, a big one and a little one, and we use them regularly year-round. We still use our microwave, gas oven and cook top, and Big GF Rotisserie regularly too, but some things are just best cooked in the crock pot.
As far as heat in the kitchen during the summer, our kitchen temperature is close to whatever the outside temperature is at the time. Right now, we’ve been having several days of 100+ temperatures. We decided to quit trying to cool the kitchen back a few years ago. We prepare nearly all of our meals in our kitchen (except when I cook on the wood grill out in the backyard), including the ones that we take to the shop for our lunch. In the hot part of summer, preparing meals daily created a lot of heat that we in turn had to spend money to cool back down with the AC. Add to that the dishwasher heating element, the compressors on two refrigerators and a freezer, the gas water heater, the coffee pot that’s on all morning, and the clothes dryer. All of these appliances are in the same kitchen and adjoining utility room area.
We finally installed a clear plastic curtain between our kitchen and the rest of the house (arched doorway without a door), and disabled the AC cooling in the kitchen. I got the idea from a warehouse that I visited that use the plastic strips hanging in some of their doorways to control air flow between two temperature controlled areas. Our house happened to have a floor plan that made it work for us with one small curtain. Now we don’t care how hot it gets in the kitchen, we’re still cool in the rest of the house. The fridges and freezer may run a little more this way, but we can see a huge savings in our summer energy use. Preparing the evening meal gets a little warm, so when it gets too hot in the kitchen, simply step behind “Curtain #1” to be cool.
CD in Oklahoma