This paper presents a novel hierarchical distributed architecture for Energy Management Systems that is based on resource management in real-time systems. The foundation of this architecture is an object-oriented model of the entire power system. The overall framework for the architecture has been developed through the application of algorithms that exploit the inherent parallelism between objects in scheduling objectoriented tasks in real-time. In this research an attempt has been made to provide a new perspective for the problem of designing efficient information/communication architecture for Energy Management Systems by viewing it as one of efficient resource management in real-time systems. This paper presents the detailed description of the proposed framework, along with an illustration of the key aspects through an example power system application.