The highly interdisciplinary nature of existing deregulated power industries makes research a challenge. Recognizing the complexity associated with the domain we propose a layered, modular approach to modeling and studying this domain. Such an approach helps in establishing a clear relationship among the various engineering and economic aspects of power systems, which is essential to gain insight into the nuances of the field. In this paper we describe our methodology and provide the architecture for an environment to support such investigation. With rapid technological advances as well as deregulation of power systems in most parts of the world we feel that such an approach would be very valuable in studying the various issues of interest.