One of the recurring problems facing energy control center dispatchers each day is how to operate the system during the periods of high load pickup, such that there is sufflcient generation to follow the load pickup, while still maintaining reasonable reserve and/or regulation margin. This paper shows a technical solution to this problem which can be achieved with a very efficient use of computer resources. The problem is expressed as a dynamic programming scheduling problem, and a feasible, but suboptimal solution is proposed, which eliminates the usual search space problem. This method reduces the problem to a backward sequence of dispatch problems, with the generator limits being carefully adjusted between each time interval in the solution sequence. The paper also discusses an efficient algorithm for the solution of a reserve constrained economic dispatch, which is the static optimization technique used at each interval.