A photovoltaic (PV)-battery power source consists of a PV panel, a primary DC/DC converter, and a battery or a batteries bank. It is generally used to provide electric energy for local consumers such as buildings. Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) schemes cannot be applied to it because the PV panel output current is only determined by the state of charge (SOC) of the battery. In this study, two novel techniques are proposed to increase the energy efficiency of PV-battery power sources. Replacing the primary DC/DC converter with a novel proposed DC/PWM inverter, and decomposing the PV panel into a set of parallel homogenous configured PV modules are the two proposed techniques. It is shown that the implementation of each technique effectively increases the energy efficiency of PV-battery power sources. The two techniques are combined to each other to implement a new PV-battery power source. It is proved that the energy efficiency of the new version is significantly more than conventional version. Simulated results performed in MATLAB/Proteus 6 verify an increase of 29% in the energy efficiency. Four PV-battery power sources have been built, and comparative experimental results are presented that verify an increase of 27% in the energy efficiency. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.