This paper proposes a method of solving a unit commitment problem using tabu search (TS) which is heuristic algorithm. Ts is a local search method that starts from any initial solution and attempts to determine a better solution using memory structures. In this paper, to reduce the computation time for finding the optimal solution, changing tabu list size as intensification strategy and path relinking method as diversification strategy are proposed. To show the usefulness of the proposed method, we simulated for 10 units system and 110 units system. Numerical results show improvements in the generation costs and the computation time compared with priority list, genetic algorithm(GA), and hybrid GA.