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Solar heating and cooling (SHC) systems are currently under rapid development and deployment due to their potential to reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the building sector. Absorption chiller technology (traditionally powered by natural gas in large buildings) can be retrofitted to run fully, or in part, on solar energy. The majority of solar absorption chillers installed around the world are based on single-effect chillers and low-temperature solar thermal collectors. Benefiting from higher coefficients of performance (COPs), multi-effect absorption chillers can operate more efficiently than single-effect chillers when coupled with high-temperature solar thermal collectors, thereby requiring less solar thermal energy (and potentially less collector area) to supply a given amount of cooling. Although multi-effect absorption chillers have been on the market for a while, experimental testing, standardization, and systematic comparative investigations of their performance and viability are lacking in the literature. In fact, there has been no comprehensive comparison between solar-assisted single-, double-, and triple-effect absorption chillers against a common set of energetic, economic, and environmental metrics from a holistic perspective. Motivated by this research gap, this thesis aims to systematically investigate the techno-economic feasibility of this technology, incorporating realistic, optimized configurations to supply air-conditioning (both cooling and heating) demand for large buildings. This analysis is based on coupling LiBr-H2O single-, double-, and triple-effect absorption chillers with solar thermal collectors. Based on manufacturer rated performance curves for real chiller and collector products on the market, simulation models of each SHC absorption chiller configuration with different design options are developed in a transient system simulation environment (TRNSYS 17). Different control scenarios and operational modes