This paper presents a new hybrid approach integrating the cross-entropy (CE) algorithm and the sequential quadratic programming (SQP) technique to solve the economic load dispatch (ELD) problem related to electrical power generating units. Due to the introduction of the valve-point effect in the ELD objective function, the optimization task requires tools appropriate for a nonconvex optimization landscape. In this respect, we employ the CE approach, which constructs a random sequence of solutions probabilistically converging to a near-optimal solution and, thus, facilitating the exploration capability. Additionally, to fine-tune the solution in promising basins of attraction, the SQP algorithm is invoked, which performs a local search. Despite its reliance on a global heuristic scheme, CE-SQP is vested with fast convergence capability, which may entail its use for online power dispatch. The effectiveness and the robustness of the proposed method in comparison with several state-of-the-art approaches have been demonstrated with four standard test systems that are widely reported in the ELD literature.