The aim of this work is to study the primary control system of a hydropower plant in isolated mode. The power plant is modeled by differential equations and results are compared to field data from an actual hydropower plant, presenting deviations lower than 1.0%. The study of primary control system is conducted in order to define useful sets of parameters for controllers. Four controllers are studied: traditional, PI, PID and PI-PD. The performances are evaluated by stability criteria and a performance index. For the hydropower plant studied, the PI controller has the best performance.