Summary In recent years, the attention towards the utilization of solar and wind power systems are becoming more popular because of its nonpolluted and nondepleting nature. However, these power sources rely on environmental conditions for power generation. So, extracting maximum power available from the wind and solar systems is essential. Many of the existing maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques' performances are not convenient in the hybrid operation of wind and solar power systems. So, to provide an optimum MPPT operation, this paper proposes a fuzzy logic controll er (FLC)–based elephant herding optimization (EHO) technique for MPPT in the hybrid wind‐solar system. The proposed fuzzy‐EHO (FEHO) method has the tendency to track the maximum power under the partial shading condition of the photovoltaic (PV) system and low wind speed situations. The results are compared with the conventional MPPT methods, and it shows that the proposed optimization method efficiently tracks the maximum power point of the wind‐solar power systems even with the variations in the climatic conditions. MATLAB tool is used in the design and operation of the proposed method. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed system is tested with an experimental setup and provides better efficiency.

Generally, partially shaded conditions frequently arise in large photovoltaic generation systems which in turn cause system losses. Therefore, arrival of multiple peak values is possible in the power-voltage characteristic curves of photovoltaic systems. Such kind of issues is resolved through the usage of novel control algorithms for multilevel dc link inverters. These algorithms depend on the arrangement of pulse width modulation and direct pulse width modulation system to be with MPPT performance based on fuzzy controller to control the multilevel DC link inverter. Under the partial shading conditions, the proposed algorithm is applied on single-phase seven-level inverter with isolated maximum power point tracking techniques. The maximum power recovery of photovoltaic sources is enabled by several maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques like modified perturb and observe (P&O), incremental conductance and voltage hold P&O. The spectral quality of the inverter output is observed through the simulation studies of MATLAB/Simulink working platform. Also, hardware results are verified with the help of ATMEGA8 microcontroller. Keywords Maximum power point tracking Á Fuzzy logic Á Controller Á Photovoltaic cells Á Pulse width modulation Á DC link inverter Á Perturb and observe Á Microcontroller Communicated by V. Loia.