Abstract: The development of new power systems will inevitably lead to major changes in the patterns of the power systems. With the constantly growing renewable energy penetration and the widespread application of power electronic equipment, the types of energy sources and loads accommodated in the power systems will continuously increase in the future, and the complexity of operation and control will also rise sharply. This paper describes a new paradigm of the large-scale power systems divided into multi-level smaller-scale power systems containing distributed resource clusters. Each resource cluster has the capability of electric power supply, consumption and exchange, and manages to achieve power balance and autonomously optimal operation. This paper proposes the three-layer network (energy network, information network, value network) architecture and overall research design of the new hierarchical cluster power systems. At the energy network level, the technical characteristics and patterns of the new hierarchical cluster power systems are proposed, and China's current relevant policy support is introduced. At the information network level, after introducing the problem of distributed sensing and information fusion in the new power systems, the focus is put on the application of swarm intelligence and cooperative control theories and technologies (especially the frequency control problem). At the value network level, new transaction mechanisms and business models such as distributed resource peer-to-peer transactions and virtual power plants are introduced. Finally, the frontier research directions of new power systems are discussed from the perspective of complex system theories based on multidisciplinary research.