The perturb and observe and an incremental conductance methods are most widely used for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) for solar photovoltaic system. However, it suffers from loss of tracking due to dynamic weather conditions and steady-state oscillations near the maximum power point (MPP). This paper proposes a novel centroid analogy-based MPPT, where centroid analogy (CA) is hybridized with the hill climbing (HC) algorithm (CAHC). The CAHC algorithm reduces the response time, oscillations and the effects of changing insolation. The proposed technique is based on the conventional algorithm, but it has a different approach towards the goal of reaching the MPP. It is based on using CA as a method to reach the new point on the P–V curve. This CA technique reduces the number of steps taken to reach MPP considerably. The proposed method is tested on MATLAB simulation platform, as well as validated on the hardware prototype. The obtained results are compared with state-of-the-art techniques, which show the superiority and meet the objectives to develop the CAHC MPPT algorithm. © 2019, Shiraz University.