Abstract: Characterized by extracting high quality heat from low quality heat, the absorption-type heat pump can be used in retrofit project for energy-saving purposes. However, if the pump is applied in thermal power plants, the differences in thermal systems, driving heat sources and implementation locations of recovered waste heat will yield completely different results. In this paper, through the economic analysis on the waste heat recovery technique which is used to heat up the make-up water in two types of units, it is clarified that waste heat recovery may not achieve the goal of energy saving because of the cold end losses and the quality of the waste heat. When the waste heat recovered from the circulating water by heat pump is completely used to heat up the water of heat-supply network, the thermal efficiency of units can be improved, but when it is only used for the unit itself, it may not fulfill the objective of becoming more energy efficient.