By modeling the uncertainty of spinning reserves provided by energy storage with probabilistic constraints, a new optimal scheduling mode is proposed for minimizing the operating costs of an isolated microgrid (MG) by using chance-constrained programming. The model is transformed into a readily solvable mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation in GAMS via a proposed discretized step transformation (DST) approach and finally solved by applying the CPLEX solver. By properly setting the confidence levels of the spinning reserve probability constraints, the MG operation can be achieved a trade-off between reliability and economy. The test results on the modified ORNL DECC lab MG test system reveal that the proposal significantly exceeds the commonly used hybrid intelligent algorithm with much better and more stable optimization results and significantly reduced calculation times.