Community solar and storage could help power California toward its goals for clean energy, grid reliability, energy equity and affordable housing — but only if regulators don’t allow the state’s biggest utilities to undermine it.

That’s the argument a sprawling coalition of solar industry groups, consumer advocates, environmental justice organizations, labor unions and the state’s homebuilding industry has been making before the California Public Utilities Commission over the past few months.

The fight has centered around a new proposed payment structure for community solar called the Net Value Billing Tariff (NVBT), which the coalition says is crucial to revamping California’s moribund community solar market and would make community solar in the state both economical and effective. A structure for community solar payments was ordered up by AB 2316, a state law passed last year.