Many applications of smart grid can be formulated as constrained optimization problems. Because of the discrete controls involved in power systems, these problems are essentially mixed-integer nonlinear programs. In this paper, we review the Trust-Tech-based methodology for solving mixed-integer nonlinear optimization. Specifically, we have developed a two-stage Trust-Tech-based methodology to systematically compute all the local optimal solutions for constrained mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problems. In the first stage, for a given MINLP problem this methodology starts with the construction of a new, continuous, unconstrained problem through relaxation and the penalty function method. A corresponding dynamical system is then constructed to search for a set of local optimal solutions for the unconstrained problem. In the second stage, a reduced constrained NLP is defined for each local optimal solution by determining and fixing the values of integral variables of the MINLP problem. The Trust-Tech-based method is used to compute a set of local optimal solutions for these reduced NLP problems, from which the optimal solution of the original MINLP problem is determined. A numerical simulation of several testing problems is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.