Thanks to all of you for a lively discussion. John, you are correct in assuming that it is the clip on meter I am concerned about. I would have thought that as the solar system is producing sufficient power for the current load then the demand from the grid is zero or less and the energy monitor should show this.
As has been discussed, your energy monitor is almost certainly giving you a figure for net energy flow (without knowing about direction of flow). If you were generating 600W and using 300W, that would leave 300W to be exported to the grid, and that is probably what your energy monitor would show (and, not being able to distinguish flow in different directions, that will 'look the same' as if you were
importing 300W from the grid). If, whilst you were generating 600W, you increased your usage from 300W up to 500W, that would leave just 100W to be exported to the grid, and I suspect that is what your energy monitor would show.
On the point of clip on current transformers, I downloaded instructions for one of the water heater diverters, and in the setup section you needed to swop the wires around if the unit did not work correctly! I always understood that a current transformer gave an AC output so how would swapping wires show the direction of flow od an AC supply.
Without seeing more information, I don't know exactly what that current transformer is doing. However, although the output of a current transformer will be AC, and of identical magnitude no matter which way around one connects it, the
phase of the AC will be reversed by swapping the connections (analogous to reversing DC polarity if you swap the connections to, say, a battery). It may have nothing to do with this but, as discussed at length above, the relationship between phase of the current and phase of the voltage can be used to determine the direction of energy flow).
Kind Regards, John