摘要:The purpose of the paper is description of the method of estimating the investment appeal rate of hydropower construction in the federal subjects. The method is based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). According to the method every federal subject is estimated by the decision-maker. The authors collected data for this study from Russian Federal State Statistics Service, the Federal Subjects Development Programs and the Power Industry Development Programs of the federal subjects (23 indicators). The federal subjects were estimated according to these indicators. As a result of this project every estimated federal subject has status: attractive, relatively attractive and non-attractive for hydropower development. The results can be applied to calculate the economic hydropower potential. The method was tested for detecting the attractive federal subjects of the Volga Federal District, North Caucasian Federal District, Northwestern Federal District, Siberian Federal District for hydropower development.