A conventional hill climbing method is not capable of tracking a maximum power
when a shadow covers a part of a solar cell panel and a plurality of maximal values
is thereby developed. The invention provides a photovoltaic power generation system
control method that controls a photovoltaic output setting value to be an appropriate
value by following up a variation in the solar irradiation, including a genetic
algorithm process of employing the photovoltaic output setting value as a gene
and the output power as an evaluation value thereof; randomly extracting a plurality
of genes and repeating storage, selection and crossover/mutation of the output
powers which are the evaluation values of the genes, so as to converge a difference
between a maximum and minimum values of the output voltages into a predetermined
range; and a hill climbing process of setting the photovoltaic output setting value
corresponding to the greatest value of the converged output voltages, and a greater
and a lower value than the photovoltaic output setting value by a predetermined
amount, so as to select the greatest output power among these values; and repeating
such steps to track the maximum output power.