In this paper, a self adaptive real-coded genetic algorithm (SARGA) is implemented to solve the combined heat and power economic dispatch (CHPED) problem. The self adaptation is achieved by means of tournament selection along with simulated binary crossover (SBX). The selection process has a powerful exploration capability by creating tournaments between two solutions. The better solution is chosen and placed in the mating pool leading to better convergence and reduced computational burden. The SARGA integrates penalty parameterless constraint handling strategy and simultaneously handles equality and inequality constraints. The population diversity is introduced by making use of distribution index in SBX operator to create a better offspring. This leads to a high diversity in population which can increase the probability towards the global optimum and prevent premature convergence. The SARGA is applied to solve CHPED problem with bounded feasible operating region which has large number of local minima. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method can find a solution towards the global optimum and compares favourably with other recent methods in terms of solution quality, handling constraints and computation time. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.