Swarm intelligence computation is becoming an important topic in the field of artificial intelligence, and is successfully applied in a lot of fields, which is indicating fairly great potential for development. Recently, there are abundant reports on its practical applications in power system. In this paper, on the basis of describing three typical swarm intelligence algorithms: ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization and population-based immune algorithm, the current research situation of the applications in the fields of economic dispatch of power system, unit commitment, reactive power optimization dispatch, generation expansion planning, capacitor placement, short-term load forecasting and optimal design is summarized. Finally, the central research directions of swarm intelligence computation in the future are proposed