The absorption-compression hybrid refrigeration cycle has been considered as an effective approach to reduce the mechanical work consumption by using low-grade heat, such as solar energy. This work aims at studying the thermodynamic mechanism of the hybrid refrigeration cycle. Two fundamental concepts have been proposed, which are the ultimate refrigerating temperature (or the ultimate temperature lift) and the behavior turning. On the basis of that, the interaction mechanism of compressor pressure increasing with other key-parameters and the impact of compressor pressure increasing on the cycle performance have been investigated. The key-parameters include the concentration difference, the circulation ratio of working fluid, etc. The work points out that the hybrid refrigeration cycle performance varies with the change of compressor outlet pressure and depends on which one achieves dominance in the hybrid refrigeration cycle, the absorption sub-system or the compression sub-system. The behavior turning point during parameters changing corresponds to a maximum value of the heat powered coefficient of performance. In this case, the hybrid refrigeration cycle performance is optimal because the low-grade heat utilization is the most effective. In addition, to validate the theoretical analysis, a solar hybrid refrigeration cycle with R134a-DMF as working pair was simulated. The Peng-Robinson equation of state was adopted to calculate thermophysical properties when the reliability assessment of the prediction models on the available literature data of R134a-DMF system had been carried out. The results are in good agreement with the theoretical analysis. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.