First solo show for artist at nearly 100

30 July 2011 Last updated at 15:41 GMT James Mills pictured with two of his paintings An artist is celebrating having his first solo exhibition of his work - at the age of 99.

James Mills, who will be 100 on 12 September, is having his oils and watercolours exhibited at a gymnastics club in Neath.

Among the works on display at Neath-Afan Gymnastics Club is a sketch from 1930.

Mr Mills, who still picks up his paint brush an hour or two a day, said his commisions now are "made to order".

"It has been a long held ambition of mine to have a solo exhibition of my work so I am delighted that I have finally been able to achieve it, he said.

He uses mediums including acrylic and watercolours, but says he prefers to paint in oil and watercolours.

After the death of his wife Violet, the former marine engineer moved to Cimla, Neath from Barry, Vale of Glamorgan in 2002 to be nearer to his son Roger and his family.

He only started painting at the age of 57.

As a resident of Barry, he joined the Baruc Art Society and the South Wales Art Society, through which he was able to develop his love of painting.

'Very sprightly'

Painting completed a few months ago of Mr Mills great-grand-daughter

He exhibited many paintings through these groups, winning prizes, including the Saunders Waterford Watercolour Painting competition in 1990.

A portrait of Prince Charles in 1980 was later bought by Barry Town Council to hang in the central library.

According to Mr Mills' grand-daughter Nicola Lewis, who arranged his solo exhibition, Prince Charles has seen the portrait and was extremely impressed.

Among the artist's other works are portraits of Welsh sports stars Jonathan Davies and Colin Jackson and actor Ruth Madoc.

Mrs Lewis said she was happy to arrange this exhibition for her "very sprightly" grandfather, who was still skipping at the age of 90.

"I had promised for a very long time that as soon as I had opened our long planned gymnastics centre I would give a weekend over to his exhibition.

"Finally that has come to fruition, so a very exciting time for us all."

They are now busy planning a "mega-party" for Mr Mills 100th birthday which will be combined with other family celebrations in six weeks time, she said.

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First solar park due to power up

8 July 2011 Last updated at 06:46 GMT By Iolo ap Dafydd BBC Wales environment correspondent Dr Glen Peters, who owns the land and the nearby county mansion and art centre, has funded the project

The first solar park in Wales is expected to start converting sunlight into electricity later at the Rhosygilwen estate in Pembrokeshire.

Almost 10,000 solar panels have been imported from the United States and are placed in 12 lines in a six-acre field.

The ?2.5m investment will be onstream three weeks before the UK government lowers the subsidy for large-scale solar energy investors.

The site's owner Western Solar still hopes to double its size.

It is run by Dr Glen Peters who owns Rhosygilwen mansion and art centre with his family.

He said: "There are 10,000 panels here. They are very cutting edge from the States.

"They are thin film, particularly suited to our climate here of largely cloudy skies."

He has planning consent for a development twice the size but had to rethink his plans.

"There was no bank financing available. I then had to take a total act of faith and said 'okay, we will halve the scheme, we will do one megawatt initially' and I basically raided my pension fund."

The development would be enough to power 300 homes.

Other applications for three and five megawatt solar parks at Cynheidre and Ffos Las in west Wales are said to be still in planning.

But while Rhosygilwen has beaten the government's closing of a lucrative loophole, developers like Nigel Payne of Allied Renewables in Swansea are setting their sights lower.

His company hopes to complete three much smaller, 50 kilowatt, solar parks by September.

Expansion concern

Another 10 are in the planning stage and, by reducing the size of the output, will still be able to generate a return of 30.7p per kilowatt hour.

"It spreads the feed-in tariff to what it was designed for - not supporting large-scale solar farms where subsidies would be absolutely gobbled up," he said.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change has said from 1 August tariffs would be reduced for large solar panel investors.

Any large-scale solar farms above 250 kilowatts, and up to 5 megawatts, will be able to claim 8.5p per kilowatt hour.

Schemes between 150 kilowatts and 250 kilowatts will be able to claim 15p per kilowatt hour and schemes ranging from 50 kilowatts to 150 kilowatts 19p per kilowatt hour.

Solar installations below 50 kilowatts are unchanged.

The average household installation, less than 4 kilowatts, will still be claiming the highest bracket of 43.3p per kilowatt hour.

With the solar industry increasing over the past 12 months from generating 4 megawatt of power in Britain to 96 megawatts, Dr Owen Guy, Swansea University's senior lecturer in nano technology, said there were some concerns that expansion could slow down.

"It's still available for the small-scale projects. Individuals will be able to install four kilowatt systems on their homes and will still be able to get a good return on their investment," he said.

"But the large scale companies wont be able to make the profit they have been."

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