Aimed at the hot spot of a (photovoltaic) PV system, this research focused on an investigation of the corresponding mitigating strategies. First, the current hot spot mitigating strategies of PV panels were summarized and compared from the aspects of mitigating cost, power loss, hot spot temperature and the output power of PV panels, and then, an intuitive evaluation method to hot spot mitigating strategies was developed on the basis of the area assessment. Then, a new hot spot mitigating strategy was developed by using a divider resistor in series. The mitigating circuit of the proposed strategy was designed, and its operating principle was analyzed. Finally, the effectiveness of the mitigating strategy was verified by simulation and experiments. Compared with the others, the proposed hot spot mitigating strategy had the advantages of lower temperature and larger output power of PV panels. Finally, a potential application of the power loss the on divider resistor was explored in brief and some conclusions were reached.