During its operation, a photovoltaic system may encounter many practical issues such as receiving uniform or non-uniform irradiance caused mainly by partial shading. Under uniform irradiance a photovoltaic panel has a single maximum power point. Conversely under non-uniform irradiance, a photovoltaic panel has several local maximum power points and a single global maximum power point. To maximize energy production, a maximum power point tracker algorithm is commonly implemented to achieve the maximum power operating point of the photovoltaic panel. However, the performance of the algorithm will depend on operating conditions such as variation in irradiance. Presently, most of existing maximum power point tracker algorithms work only in a single condition: either uniform or non-uniform irradiance. This paper proposes a new maximum power point tracker algorithm for photovoltaic power generation that is designed to work under uniform and partial shading irradiance conditions. Additionally, the proposed maximum power point tracker algorithm aims to provide: (1) a simple math algorithm to reduce computational load, (2) fast tracking by evaluating progress for every single executed duty cycle, (3) without random steps to prevent jumping duty cycle, and (4) smooth variable steps to increase accuracy. The performances of the proposed algorithm are evaluated by three conditions of uniform and partial shading irradiance where a targeted maximum power point is located: (1) far from, (2) near, and (3) laid between initial positions of particles. The simulation shows that the proposed algorithm successfully tracks the maximum power point by resulting in similar power values in those three conditions. The proposed algorithm could handle the partial shading condition by avoiding the local maxima power point and finding the global maxima power point. Comparisons of the proposed algorithm and other well-known algorithms such as differential evolution, firefly, particle swarm optimization, and grey wolf optimization are provided to show the superiority of the proposed algorithm. The results show the proposed algorithm has better performance by providing faster tracking, faster settling time, higher accuracy, minimum oscillation and jumping duty cycle, and higher energy harvesting.

<span>Due to natural randomness, partial shading conditions (PSCs) to photovoltaic (PV) power generation significantly drop the power generation. Metaheuristic based maximum power point tracking (MPPT) can handle PSCs by searching PV panels’ global maximum power point (GMPP). However, trapped at local maxima, sluggishness, continuous power oscillations around GMPP and inaccuracy are the main disadvantages of metaheuristic algorithm. Therefore, the development of algorithm under complex PSCs has been continuously attracting many researchers to yield more satisfying results. In this paper, several algorithms including conventional and metaheuristic are selected for candidate, such as perturb and observe (P&amp;O), firefly (FF), differential evolution (DE), grey wolf optimizer (GWO) and Seagull optimizer (SO). From the preliminary study, SO has shown best performance among other candidates. Then, SO is improved for rapid global optimizer. Modified variable step sizes perturb and observe (MVSPO) is applied to enhance the accuracy tracking of SO. To evaluate the performances, high complexity multipeak partial shading is used to test the algorithms. Statistical results are also provided to analyze the trend of performances. The proposed method performances are shown better fast-tracking time and settling time, high accuracy, higher energy harvesting and low steady-state oscillations than other candidates.</span>

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