Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Vol. 12, No. 1, October 2018, pp. 333~340 ISSN: 2502-4752, DOI: 10.11591/ijeecs.v12.i1.pp333-340  333 Journal homepage: http://iaescore.com/journals/index.php/ijeecs An Electromagnetism-like Mechanism Algorithm Approach for Photovoltaic System Optimization Jian Ding Tan 1 , Siaw Paw Koh 2 , Sieh Kiong Tiong 3 , Kharudin Ali 4 , Ying Ying Koay 5 1,2,3,5 Institute of Sustainable Energy (ISE), Universiti Tenaga Nasional, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia 4 Faculty of Electrical and Automation Engineering Technology, TATIUC, Terengganu 24000, Malaysia Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received May 5, 2018 Revised Jun 26, 2018 Accepted Jul 12, 2018 Solar energy has become one of the most studied topic in the field of renewable energy. In this paper, an artificial intelligent approach is proposed for the optimization of a photovoltaic solar energy harvesting system. An Electromagnetism-Like Mechanism Algorithm (EM) has been developed to search for the hourly optimum tilt angles for photovoltaic panels. In order to investigate the effect of the search step size on the efficiency and overall accuracy of the algorithm, the EM has also been modified into several variants with different search step size settings. Experimental findings show that EM with bigger search lengths has the advantage of reaching a near optimum tilt angle in earlier iterations but less accurate. EM with smaller step lengths, on the other hand, can hit a relatively more optimum tilt angle in the process. During the peak of the power generation at noon, EM with smaller search stes found an optimum tilt angle which yielded additional 3.17W of power compared to a fixed panel. We thus conclude that the proposed EM performs well in optimizing the tilt angle of a photovoltaic solar energy harvesting system. Keywords: Electromagnetism-like mechanism Photovoltaic panel Solar tracking system Tilt angle Copyright © 2018 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved. Corresponding Author: Jian Ding Tan, Institute of Sustainable Energy (ISE), Universiti Tenaga Nasional, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia. Email: jdtan2003@yahoo.com 1. INTRODUCTION Renewable energy has become a term commonly known worldwide nowadays. With the fossil fuel diminishing, researchers around the globe are turning their attention into more sustainable energy sources. Among others is the solar energy [1]. Solar energy is popularly researched and implemented around the world due to its sustainability and minimal environmental damage [2]. Two systems are widely used in harvesting solar power today, namely the Solar Thermal Collector (STC) and the Photovoltaic (PV) cells. STCs convert sunlight into thermal energy while the PV cells turn solar energy directly into electricity [3]. In the literature, there are many methods of improvement to increase the energy generated by a solar harvesting system. One of the important aspects is to maximize the solar radiation that falls onto the harvesting system. The solar radiation data are not readily available for many locations in the world. Thus, it has to be estimated. A number of techniques can be found in the literature to estimation the solar radiation on tilted surface [4]-[6]. The total solar radiation that falls onto a PV panel is greatly affected by its orientation and tilt angle [7], [ 8]. Thus, one of the best ways to make sure maximum solar radiation onto the PV panel is to implement a solar tracker. The contribution of this paper is threefold and can be summarized along the line as follows. Firstly, a relatively new approach, the Electromagnetism-like Mechanism algorithm (EM), has been implemented to track the maximum solar ray in order to optimize the power generated by a PV solar energy