I've ordered twice, and plan to order another 5kw soon
After having 2 unbranded circuit breakers fail on me. Everything else will be Blue Sea, or Victron. They're the most expensive, but they feel as high quality as they are expensive which makes it worth it. Especially considering the alternative is explosions followed by fire.
But when you are putting together a system that simply needs to work and that outputs clean power then you have very few companies that are that well supported. I've used Xantrex, Sunpower, Victron, ABB and a bunch of noname stuff. I'm sure there are plenty of others. The only one that comes close in design quality is ABB, Xantrex used to be good but it has gone down tremendously in the last decade and a half, the remainder I will never use again.
> Why buy something that might explode from a trustworthy business, when it's cheaper out the back of some dudes car.
For a system that is bullet proof and where there are very strict requirements it makes sense to spend that money, for your homebrew system it likely doesn't, but you can pick up their inverters for a good discount at the various surplus auction sites with some regularity and that's the best of both worlds: great quality at a reasonable price.
The first question to ask yourself is if you want the comfort of a high quality warranty or would you like the cheapest possible price per kWh?
In my RV, in May, I went with somewhat high-end Battleborn Batteries. They have a great warranty, which has come in handy as one of the batteries I bought experienced an issue and needed to be sent in for repair. They paid for shipping in both directions.
That being said, nowadays even just a few months later, I might decide to "self-insure" given how good the cheaper batteries have gotten.
Those were the horror stories I read about back when I had some for my Walkera rc helicopter.
that said, LiFePO4 is a pretty safe technology at this point
LiFePO4 are lithium iron phosphate.