Abstract: The main objective of economic load dispatch in power systems is to optimize the power distribution of each generator unit under the premise of meeting the stability and load balance of the power system, in order to minimize the total power supply cost and environmental pollutant emissions. This paper analyzes the optimization indicators of economic load dispatch in power systems and studies the application of the improved MSWOA algorithm in the economic load dispatch of power systems. A chaotic mapping-based initialization strategy, as well as a nonlinear convergence factor and an inertia weight adjustment mechanism, are proposed to enhance the algorithm's global search and local exploitation capabilities. Simulation results show that the improved MSWOA algorithm outperforms traditional algorithms in terms of total system generation cost and convergence speed, demonstrating its superiority in the optimization of economic load dispatch in power systems.