[cloudbonsai]

> What goes into a mount that makes it so expensive? Its essentially just a piece of metal, right?

I think this graph sheds some light on your question:

https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-in...

What happened in the last decade was that solar panels ("Module" in this graph) got very very cheap. They used to cost $3 per watt in 2010, but now only cost $0.3 per watt.

This extreme price drop happened thanks to technical innovations (such as commoditization of PERC cells), and the large-scale production in PRC.

Metal components ("Hardware - BOS" in this graph) did get cheaper in the same time frame ($0.6 per watt to $0.5 per watt), but their cost cannot be reduced as much exactly because they are just a piece of metal i.e. there is no low-hanging fruit in Metallurgy.