Abstract: To improve the economic benefits of microgrid operation and solve the intermittency and instability problems of renewable energy output power on the generation side of a microgrid, an optimal dispatch method based on the time-of-use (TOU) price mechanism is proposed. First, taking 24 h/day as an example, the optimal output characteristic curve of each micro-source is investigated under grid-connected operation mode. Second, the multi-agent technology is adopted to coordinate the autonomous control of the generation side, energy storage unit, and demand side. Meanwhile, the charge-discharge control strategy of energy storage units is considered for the optimal scheduling of different types of micro-sources on the microgrid generation side. The proposed optimal scheduling model is solved by the multi-agent particle swarm optimization algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed TOU price strategy can effectively improve the output power consumption rate of micro-sources and the economy of microgrid system operation.