The contributions of the research are (a) an infrastructure of data acquisition systems that provides the necessary information for an automated EMS system enabling autonomous distributed state estimation, model validation, simplified protection, and seamless integration of other EMS applications, (b) an object-oriented, interoperable, and unified component model that can be seamlessly integrated with a variety of applications of the EMS, (c) a distributed dynamic state estimator (DDSE) based on the proposed data acquisition system and the object-oriented, interoperable, and unified component model, (d) a physically-based synchronous machine model, which is expressed in terms of the actual self and mutual inductances of the synchronous machine windings as a function of rotor position, for the purpose of synchronous machine parameters identification, and (e) a robust and highly efficient algorithm for the optimal power flow (OPF) problem, one of the most important applications of the EMS, based on the validated states and models of the power system provided by the proposed DDSE.