Abstract As the wind power is growing renewable energy source, so it is necessary to research wind energy conversion system in the economic load dispatch problem, and the objective of this problem is to minimize wind power costs while meeting some constraints. This paper proposes a bat (BA) algorithm, which is used to solve the problem efficiently and reliably. Due to the stochastic nature of wind power output and the imbalance charges such as over estimation cost, so the proposed algorithm takes forecasting errors of wind into account. Experimental data and simulation results show that, compared with PSO algorithm, BA algorithm in solving the problem of economic load dispatch has great feasibility in wind power system.