Distributed generation, demand response, distributed storage, smart appliances, electric vehicles, and other emerging distributed smart grid assets are expected to play a key part in the transformation of the American power system. Due to the variability and uncertainty associated with these resources, there is much trepidation from the part of system planners and operators about the controllability of such resources, and how they affect the stability of the grid infrastructure. It is proposed to develop a hierarchical, distributed control architecture, enabling smart grid assets to effectively contribute to grid operations in a controllable manner, while ensuring system stability and equitably rewarding their contribution. The architecture will unify the dispatch of these resources to provide both market-based and balancing services. A means to dynamically select and arm the autonomous responses from these assets, enabling them to offer significant reliability benefits under the full range of grid operating conditions, will be developed. Transmission-level controls will be integrated with new and existing distribution-level control strategies, within a market structure, under both normal and disrupted operations (disrupted communications and other unforeseen events).