Abstract This paper proposes an optimal dispatching strategy for a multi-source power generation system containing electric heating devices. A multi-source co-generation system model containing electric heating devices is constructed with the minimum integrated operating cost and the minimum variance of system output power as the multi-objective functions, and the system operating constraints and heat storage constraints as the constraints. A greedy algorithm is introduced and an improved NSGA-II algorithm is proposed to solve the model. After comparison, the integrated operation cost of the multi-source co-generation system with an electric heating device is reduced by 11.35%, the scenery utilization rate is increased by 22.15%, and the total power output volatility is reduced by 29.18%. The results verify the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed optimal scheduling strategy and the improved algorithm.