The CEL Rural project is a Spain-Portugal cooperation project co-funded by the European POCTEP programme and led by the Instituto Tecnológico de Galicia Foundation (ITG), in which partners from both countries participate with the aim of promoting the implementation of renewable energies at a national level, strengthening the development of a sustainable and local energy system in the cross-border regions of the POCTEP area, through the adoption of innovative models of shared self-consumption of energy within the framework of local energy communities in rural areas. To achieve this goal, pilot actions, scale demonstrators and technology will be developed for this type of disruptive system for rural areas, whose advantages are manifold in terms of sustainability, social cohesion and economic benefits. The Culatra2030 initiative, coordinated by André Pacheco from CIMA, is the case study in the Algarve, with Jânio Monteiro from the University of the Algarve's Higher Institute of Engineering (ISE) coordinating the activities.