This paper presents a new method based on an immune-tabu hybrid algorithm to solve the thermal unit commitment (TUC) problem in power plant optimization. The mathematical model of the TUC problem is established by analyzing the generating units in modern power plants. A novel immune-tabu hybrid algorithm is proposed to solve this complex problem. In the algorithm, the objective function of the TUC problem is considered as an antigen and the solutions are considered as antibodies, which are determined by the affinity computation. The code length of an antibody is shortened by encoding the continuous operating time, and the optimum searching speed is improved. Each feasible individual in the immune algorithm (IA) is used as the initial solution of the tabu search (TS) algorithm after certain generations of IA iteration. As examples, the proposed method has been applied to several thermal unit systems for a period of 24 h. The computation results demonstrate the good global optimum searching performance of the proposed immune-tabu hybrid algorithm. The presented algorithm can also be used to solve other optimization problems in fields such as the chemical industry and the power industry.