This article presents a metaheuristic approach, the binary whale optimization algorithm (BWOA), to solve complex, constrained, non-convex, binary-nature profit-based unit commitment (PBUC) optimization problems of a price-taking generation company (GenCo) in the electricity market. To simulate the binary-nature PBUC problem, the continuous, real-value whale position/location is mapped into binary search space through various transfer functions. This article introduces three variants of BWOA using tangential hyperbolic, inverse tangent (arctan) and sigmoidal transfer functions. The effectiveness of the BWOA approaches is examined in test systems with different market mechanisms, i.e. an energy-only market, and energy and reserve market participation with different reserve payment methods. The simulation results are presented, discussed and compared with other existing approaches. The convergence characteristics, solution quality and consistency of the results across different BWOA variants are discussed. The superiority and statistical significance of the proposed approaches with respect to existing approaches is also presented.