This paper reports the development of a maximum power-point tracking (MPPT) method for photovoltaic (PV) systems under partially shaded conditions using firefly algorithm. The major advantages of the proposed method are simple computational steps, faster convergence, and its implementation on a low-cost microcontroller. The proposed scheme is studied for two different configurations of PV arrays under partial shaded conditions and its tracking performance is compared with traditional perturb and observe (P&O) method and particle swarm optimization (PSO) method under identical conditions. The improved performance of the algorithm in terms of tracking efficiency and tracking speed is validated through simulation and experimental studies.