A new heuristic approach named Nawab's Sensitivity Evaluation Optimization (NSEO) for minimizing nonlinear and non-differentiable continuous space functions is introduced. By means of an extensive tested on Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) problems with valve-point effects on 3, 13, and 40-unit systems it is demonstrated that the new method converges faster and with more certainty than many other acclaimed global optimization methods. The NSEO requires few control variables, is robust, easy to use, and lends itself very well to parallel computation.