A methodology for assessing solar cooling technologies is proposed. The method takes into account location specific boundary conditions such as the cooling demand time series, solar resource availability, climatic conditions, component cost and component performance characteristics. This methodology evaluates the techno-economic performance of the solar collector/chiller system. We demonstrate the method by systematic evaluation of 25 feasible combinations of solar energy collection and cooling technologies. The comparison includes solar thermal and solar electric cooling options and is extended to solar cooling through concentrated solar power plants. Solar cooling technologies are compared on an economic and overall system efficiency perspective. This analysis has implication for the importance of solar load fraction and storage size in the design of solar cooling systems. We also stress the importance of studying the relation between cooling demand and solar resource availability, it was found that overlooking this relation might lead to overestimations of the potential of a solar cooling system in the range of 22% to over 100% of the actual potential. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.