Abstract This paper presents an edge‐based event‐triggered delay distributed algorithm for solving the economic dispatch problem (EDP) in smart grids. The objective of the EDP is to minimize the total generation cost by allocating power to individual generators, each with its local generation constraint. To save the overhead of communication resources between agents, an edge‐based event‐triggered mechanism is suggested. By setting distinct triggering thresholds for each communication edge, the agent may efficiently regulate the communication frequency among all neighbors. However, in practice, owing to the instability of the network, the agent may receive information regarding its neighbors, leading to communication lags for every communication link. The virtual agent technique and double‐stochastic matrix augmentation technique provide an equivalent delay‐free EDP. It is demonstrated that the proposed algorithm can asymptotically converge to the global optimal solution as long as the communication delay is arbitrary, time‐varying, and random, but bounded. Objective and clear evidence is provided through a case study in smart grids to verify the algorithm's feasibility.