An intelligent discontinuous control strategy for water turbine regulation is presented in this paper. Taking reliability and the static and dynamic performance of the system as the ultimate goal, it combines the classical fuzzy control theory and tri-state valve technology to form a discontinuous controller. This results in a simplified water turbine governor, both in software and hardware, The proposed control strategy greatly improves system performance and reduces the cost by totally eliminating the electro-hydraulic transducer, Simulation results show it has a satisfactory performance.