A novel generation dispatch scheduling model is proposed， in which the coal consumption is taken as the major dispatch principle instead of the generation units order. By taking the lowest coal consumption of the generation unit group as the reference value， the per unit coal consumption for each unit is calculated. According to the diversity of the per unit coal consumption， the functional relationship between the load rate of the lowest coal consumption unit and those of all the other units in the group is built. And the load rate is modified with the conditions for reaching emission limits taken into account. The load rates of each unit can be calculated by solving the power balance equation. By considering the unit regulation speed and the security constraints， the distributed power load and the corresponding 96- or 288-point generation dispatch curve of each unit is available from the load rate.