As the prevalence of mechanical space cooling in the residential sector increases in Canada, the amount of energy consumed and greenhouse gases released is increasing. Solar absorption cooling has the potential to significantly reduce the energy consumption for space cooling. The design and construction of a complete experimental apparatus to assess the performance of an absorption chiller was completed. The experimental set-up consists of a heat source, a heat rejection loop, and a building load simulator. In addition, a model of the experimental set-up was created in TRNSYS. Through
simulation it was determined that the chiller should be run for seven complete cycles and measurements taken at 30 second time intervals. The error on the temperature readings was determined to be ±0.49°C while the temperature difference measured by the thermopiles has an uncertainty of ±0.15°C. The thermal coefficient of performance can be determined to an overall uncertainty of ±3.8 percent.