Parabolic trough solar-aided coal-fired power generation system has been developed to achieve efficient use of solar energy resources by coupling conventional coal-fired power plant with solar energy. However, there are no appropriate evaluation criteria about the thermal and economic performance of the system presently. This paper proposes the evaluation standard of the solar aided coal-fired power plant, and then based on this standard an optimization of this system is applied by the genetic algorithm model. According to the optimization research of this system, a series of parameters such as the solar collector area; the way of the coupling the power plant; whether storage is needed and the relevant storage capacity are obtained. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.