This study presents development of a modified leaky least mean square (MLLMS)-based control strategy for a singlestage three-phase grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) system. In the proposed MLLMS-based control scheme, the authors employ an incremental conductance maximum power point tracking algorithm for maximum power extraction, MLLMS algorithm for extraction of fundamental active and reactive components of the load current, delivering PV power to the grid, balancing the grid current and compensating harmonics of the connected loads at the point of common coupling. By virtue of a leakage factor and selection of sum of the exponential of the adaptation error in the cost function, the MLLMS algorithm overcomes the problems of drifting, low convergence and oscillations in weights encountered by some popular adaptive algorithms, e.g. least mean square (LMS) and least mean fourth (LMF) algorithms. The proposed control scheme is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink environment under different load and environmental conditions. Subsequently, the proposed control scheme is realised on a prototype gridtied PV system developed in the laboratory. From both the simulation and experimental results, it is observed that the proposed MLLMS algorithm outperforms LMS and LMF algorithms in terms of mean square error, oscillation in weights and total harmonic distortions of the grid currents. * reference grid currents i ga , i gc , i gc actual grid currents