Accurate parameter estimation of the input-output characteristics in thermal power plants is an important issue in power system because these characteristics directly affect the economic dispatch calculations. Parameter estimation is an optimization problem in which the optimal values of the unknown parameters should be estimated by an optimization technique. By considering the valve-point effect, the parameter estimation will be more difficult since the fitness function of this optimization problem turns into a non-smooth and non-convex function in which finding the global optimal is a challenging task. In this paper, a recently proposed metaheuristic approach, crow search algorithm (CSA), is proposed for accurate estimation of the input-output characteristics of thermal power plants with and without valve-point effect. Simulation results show that CSA finds more promising results than least squares method (LSM), particle swarm optimization (PSO), genetic algorithm (GA) and artificial bee colony (ABC).