Abstract: To build the power market is for introducing competition mechanism in power industry, improving the production efficiency and lowering the power generation cost. According to the energy consumption characteristics curves gotten from operation data, the load optimal objective function and the restrained equation were constructed for thermal power unit. Based on the operation information of six units in one power plant, the optimum dispatch was realized among those units by using optimal algorithm, and the results, which were calculated by equal-microincreas rate method and Complex method, were compared and analyzed.

Key words: unit, energy consumption characteristics, load economic dispatch, equal – microincrease rate method, Complex method