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Nowadays, the need for electrical energy became crucial in the world. The co-generation plants, which simultaneously produce electrical and heat energies, are one of the alternative solutions to supply people and industry with both energies. The present work addresses the cost minimization of the nonconvex combined heat and power dispatch problem (CHPED). The nonconvex operating region is handled using the binary method, and the optimization problem is solved using two nature-inspired algorithms, namely the flower pollination algorithm (FPA) and the differential evolution (DE). Penalty functions are adopted to handle all the operating constraints, units' limits, and demands. The results obtained compare the algorithms and those of the literature. It is observed that the fuel cost obtained by the flower pollination algorithm (FPA) is less than the one obtained by the differential evolution (DE) and the particle swarm optimization (PSO). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]