In this paper, a new formulation based on the derivative of maximum power with respect to current is proposed for fuel cell parameter extraction. Compared to conventional extraction methods, the proposed method has various features such as faster convergence, higher efficiency and accuracy. In this work, the problem of parameter extraction is formulated as an optimization task and it is solved using simple GA. Explanations about the new formulation and its implementation using GA are elaborated. To validate the candidature of the proposed formulation, performance analysis is done with two sets of initial value ranges and the results are compared with the existing curve fitting method in terms of accuracy, convergence characteristics and objective function value. The results show that the proposed formulation employing GA is capable of extracting fuel cell parameters accurately with lesser computational steps and time. © 2015 Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University.