This paper presents a study based on versatile bio-inspired metaheuristic stud krill herd (SKH) algorithm to tackle the optimal power flow (OPF) problems in a power system network. SKH consists of stud selection and crossover operator that is incorporated into the original krill herd algorithm to improve the quality of the solution and especially to avoid being trapped in local optima. In order to investigate the performance, the proposed algorithm is demonstrated on the optimal power flow problems of IEEE 14-bus, IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 57-bus systems. The different objective functions considered are minimization of total production cost with and without valve point loading effect, minimization of active power loss, minimization of L-index and minimization of emission pollution. The OPF results obtained with the proposed approach are compared with the other evolutionary algorithms recently reported in the literature.