As Nova said, i'd only consider it "not cheating" if it was lossy, like the boiler takes in 1MJ of energy to heat water that would produce 500kJ of energy out,
and the only use is to heat water during the day to store the energy for later
ehrm, it's in units of harvested artifacts/second apparently, gives you a bit to many (120 when you need 100) but you can use the excess somewhere else...
The water line is fishy, there is a pair of squares, one land and the other water, that "blend" together, in general, you can walk+build on one square farther than the graphics would make you believe
tbh, once you get the smelting set up (iron and copper specifically)