Due to its clean and abundant availability, solar energy is popular as a source from which to generate electricity. Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology converts sunlight incident on the solar PV panel or array directly into non-linear DC electricity. However, the non-linear nature of the solar panels’ power needs to be tracked for its efficient utilization. The problem of non-linearity becomes more prominent when the solar PV array is shaded, even leading to high power losses and concentrated heating in some areas (hotspot condition) of the PV array. Bypass diodes used to eliminate the shading effect cause multiple peaks of power on the power versus voltage (P-V) curve and make the tracking problem quite complex. Conventional algorithms to track the optimal power point cannot search the complete P-V curve and often become trapped in local optima. More recently, metaheuristic algorithms have been employed for maximum power point tracking. Being stochastic, these algorithms explore the complete search area, thereby eliminating any chance of becoming trapped stuck in local optima. This paper proposes a hybridized version of two metaheuristic algorithms, Radial Movement Optimization and teaching-learning based optimization (RMOTLBO). The algorithm has been discussed in detail and applied to multiple shading patterns in a solar PV generation system. It successfully tracks the maximum power point (MPP) in a lesser amount of time and lesser fluctuations.
