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The principal aim of the combined heat and power economic dispatch (CHPED) is to optimize power generation, heat generation, and both heat and power obtained from co-generators with consideration of fuel cost minimization and a variety of constraints. In this article, the CHPED issue is studied using a newly proposed Strong Exploitation Strategy (SES) with Social Network Search (SNS) optimizer to form an improved SNS (ISNS) to increase the performance of the SNS by boosting the searching around the best view of all users. In addition to this, an adaptable parameter to aid in the exploitation of iterations, in the end, is proposed. The proposed strategy and the adaptable parameter aim to reduce the generation cost and improve its convergence rate. Additionally, the presence of transmission losses and valve point effect is added to the constraints. The efficacy of ISNS is proven through four examples corresponding to multiple test systems, ranging in size from seven units to ninety-six units with transmission losses and valve point loading effects constraints. The proposed ISNS’s minimal, mean, and maximum generation costs are all near to each other which demonstrates its robustness. Moreover, the applications are tested and carried out with the power and heat loading conditions at daily variation. The results manifest that ISNS is an efficient method and a good candidate for handling small-scale, medium-scale, and large-scale CHPED problems.