This work presents an experimental study about the influence of operation conditions on the performance parameters of two solar cooling machines, one using adsorption technology (FROST) and the other absorption technology (ROTARTICA). The study was made in cooperation with PROTECMA, an Environmental and Energy Company located at Gijón, Spain. PROTECMA is a business partner of PROFACTOR, an Austrian company which together with CNAM (Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers) and INDUTHERM Ingeniería e Instalaciones have developed an adsorption chiller prototype (FROST), under the auspices of the research project SOCOLD. FROST is a cost effective small sized (5 kW) solar cooling system for food conservation based on adsorption technology working jointly with a new high temperature (120°C) solar Compound Parabolic Collectors (CPC). ROTARTICA is also a small sized (4.5 kW) solar cooling system for air-conditioning (AC) based on absorption technology. The cooling machines were installed in the commercial building of the Meat Asociación of Asturias, a partnership of PROTECMA, at the village of Noreña, Spain. The thesis includes a state of the art of thermally driven cooling technologies as well as an explanation of the FROST and ROTARTICA technologies. In spite of all the operative limitations imposed to the practical work, it was possible to obtain a few experimental results with FROST machine, which are presented and discussed. Finally, and in accordance with some of the technical problems detected, several tasks for future work developments are proposed.