Water turbine generators are a nonlinear and time-varying complexity system, the electric power voltage and frequency should maintain the stable value to ensure safety power supply. The traditional PID control algorithm is difficult for accurate controlling, which causes along stabilizing time for the system. To solve the above problems and research on water turbine generator optimal control problem .the paper proposes a water turbine generator control method based on CMAC and PID. PID is used to realize feedback control and ensure that the system is stable and the system disturbances are reduced. Using CMAC feed forward control the control method speeds up the system response speed and reduces the overshoots, thus enhances the control accuracy modeling and Simulation results show that the compound CMAC and PID controller, compared with the conventional PID controller, improves the real-time performance, enhances the stability of the system, which ensures better control effects becomes more smooth and faster in adjusting.