Abstract : The effective utilization of available sources in equating the load demand on hourly bases can be implemented using unit commitment. This paper presents the novel hybrid method which is the amalgamation of a whale optimization algorithm (WOA) and a self-organizing migrating algorithm (SOMA) for obtaining optimal value of an optimization problem related to unit commitment. The WOA method is applied for assessing optimal strength population from the stochastically generated populations which is essential in a migrating loop. SOMA works on the strategy of ALL to ALL. Two test systems are considered to evaluate the potential of the proposed hybrid method. Initially, a four-unit system is conducted followed by IEEE 39 bus system. The obtained simulation outcome is made comparison with the literature methods to address the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid WAO-SOMA.