Battery export to grid

New yesterday to using battery storage. I have set-up a timed charge to use off-peak electricity to charge the battery but this did not appear to do anything until the battery was totally discharged. Last evening once the solar had stopped providing any charge I noticed that the battery started to provide power to the home demand but any excess was being fed back to the grid. It feels like I have paid to use the grid to charge the battery and then I give it back to the grid free of charge. Am I missing something or can someone help with the best settings on the dashboard. I want a fully charged battery from off-peak and then to only use that stored energy to power my own demand in the house.

RogerMoss hi, welcome to the forum.

Did you use the web portal, android or iOS app to configure the timed charge? They're all equivalent, but we can tailor assistance accordingly. When experimenting/learning, I'd suggest configuring a very short charge in a few minutes time, to see what works, rather than waiting until overnight. (Though not when it's very sunny, if solar power is enough to saturate battery charging.)

On the excess going to the grid - are we talking hundreds of watts, or just a few watts for a second or two? The latter is unavoidable since the inverter reacts to small changes in use, and therefore they happen first. The inverter cannot anticipate that you're about to turn the kettle on or off, it wait to see grid import or export, and then adjusts it's output to bring that back to zero.

On giving it back to the grid for free: if you haven't already, you'll want to apply for an export mpan, so you can get paid for export. That may take a few weeks to come through.