<span lang="EN-US">The conventional maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method such as perturb and observe (P&amp;O) under partial shading conditions with non-uniform irradiation, can get trapped on local maximum power point (LMPP) and cannot reach global maximum power point (GMPP). This study proposes a bio-inspired metaheuristic algorithm spotted hyena optimizer (SHO) and improved SHO as a new MPPT technique. The proposed SHO-MPPT and improved SHO-MPPT are used to extract GMPP from solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays operated under uniform irradiation and non-uniform irradiation. Simulation with Powersim (PSIM) and experimental with the emulated PV source were presented. Furthermore, to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, SHO-MPPT is compared with P&amp;O-MPPT and particle swarm optimization (PSO)-MPPT. The SHO-MPPT has an accuracy of 99% and has the good capability, but there are power fluctuations before reaching MPP. Therefore, improved SHO-MPPT was developed to get better results. The improved SHO-MPPT proved high accuracy of 99% and faster than SHO-MPPT and PSO-MPPT in tracking the maximum power point (MPP). Furthermore, there are minor power fluctuations.</span>