Hi @Eleanor O'Flynn and welcome to this customer forum group. Do you mean your smart meter or the in house display (IHD)? There is the standing charge added each day - on mine that appears in the very early hours so it does look like an immediate use of power but of course it’s not. 
 

Thank you for your help. No, it's the daily Smart metre readings on the Ovo app. They have become quite a point of obsession with me at the moment. I'm so enthralled by the possibilities of free electricity from the new Solar panels that I am picking it over every morning. I am puzzling over fine tuning the management.

So why the nearly 3kw at midnight (more than the standing charge?) 

And how can I find out how the battery works.?  Even if fully charged to 5kw it still appears to take useage from the grid for the brief use of any appliance over 1kw. 

Can you post a screenshot of what you’re seeing please? (No personal details as it’s a public forum)

What type of batteries and control (inverter) do you have? They do take several seconds to switch when there’s a change in load (kettle switch on or similar) and so it will draw from the grid until it’s fully switched

This is a screens shot of the midnight daily charge. If the second shot shows,  its later in the day when some 2kw use seemed to be charged without using the battery. 

Solar Max paper work looks very technical. The battery is listed as 5.04kw Alpha Smile B3 and the inverter is 3.6TD Solax Single Phase. Hope that means something. I'm pleased with the installation generally just wishing to know how to make the most of it. 

Thanks for your advice. 

Eleanor

Hi Eleanor, this seems to be the manual although you may already have this. The battery does need to maintain a 10% charge and so there may be an automatic top up from the grid to do this (there should be a setting for that).

Do you use the SolaX cloud app? If the system has a Wi-Fi connection it can be operated from the app and also the output and operation monitored. 
As I mentioned, there will be a little grid use whatever as the system tries to balance solar PV generation, household demand and residual power and the power switching isn’t as fast as demand changes but I wouldn’t expect your export level to be more than 10% of consumption. 
If your peaks are at the same time each day, it suggests there’s a setting for that and the SolaX system would be needed to look more closely. 
 

The other thing to think about is if you have a few things switched on at the same time .. it may be that the batteries and or solar cannot meet demand and do the grid fills the gap. We have a. 9kw shower which my system can’t deliver but the batteries provide some, Solar some more (if daytime) and the grid the rest so it’s worth knowing what’s already switched on when switching anything else on

Thank you again.  That explains the midnight energy use. Though it seemed to occur even when use of gas heating meant that the battery was not much depleted.

I love the Alpa ESS app that came with the system. I'm quite addicted to checking it now. I can run  an oil filled heater for as long as possible into the evening. 

I haven’t seen the Alpha app before but there’s some info here 

It looks like the system tries to predict things and if left in auto mode will switch on battery charging when it thinks it’s needed - an interesting innovation. If you wanted to look and control yourself, there are options for that but just take care what you adjust. The charging controls look like they’re here 

and I saw in the video there are timed on off slots when you can switch charging. I have a similar system but not quite so automated 

Well researched! That all looks a whole technical level more than I expected. I should try to tangle with it later when I have the confidence. As you say settings need care. 

Thank you very much for all your help.