The paper addresses the problem of designing a wavelet network-based nonlinear excitation control for power systems. A wavelet network is utilized in designing such controller. The capability of a wavelet network to approximate nonlinear functions is exploited in this work. The objective of the proposed adaptive wavelet controller is to achieve tracking between the power system output (generator angle in this case) and a prescribed reference trajectory. This controller achieves ultimately bounded tracking error and boundedness of the closed loop signals The proposed controller is compared with the classical IEEE static exciter. The comparison proves the effectiveness of the proposed controller in damping out power system oscillations that occur due to sever abnormality (e.g. three-phase to ground fault).