The objective of this paper is to develop an enhanced scheme for the detection of the local peak blockage while performing the flexible power point tracking of a photovoltaic (PV) array under partial shading. A correct detection of the local peak blockage is essential for the precise execution of the operating state re-initialization or the global maximum power point search. The proposed scheme is designed specifically for the oscillation guided adaptive step enumerative control of the PV power output. The key element of the proposed scheme is a novel partial shading condition observer (PSCO). The particular PSCO module is implemented by using an artificial neural network on the basis of a certain oscillatory phenomenon that is observed before the convergence to a maximum power point. The aforementioned PSCO module is carefully deployed to verify the occurrence of partial shading only at the instant of recognizing the power deficiency. The complete local peak monitoring logic by deploying the newly developed PSCO module is also presented. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the working of the proposed PSCO module. The overall performance of the proposed local peak blockage detection scheme is also thoroughly verified. © 2022 IEEE.