Towards a new fully-flexible control approach for distributed Power Electronics Building Block systems In this paper, we propose a novel control architecture for a complex power electronic system. A shippower system is studied in particular; however, the control architecture can be generically applied to any industrial power system. The work is founded on the substantial progress made during the 1990s with respect to standardization of power cell structure by use of the Power Electronics Building Block (PEBB) concept. Now, it is time to build new control concepts to fully exploit the standardized powerhardware. The nascent IEEE Guidelines on Control Architecture for Power Electronics in PowerSystem serve as a basis for proposing a new approach to the design and implementation of a powercontrol system. The new concepts are described and analyzed in the context of a network-based control architecture that is under development in our laboratory.