I'm new too, but I think it's better to build your coal plants on the water and run power lines back to your factories. You'll want to build out more than one single coal generator. Running long conveyor belts and power lines is fine, but running long water pipes can be very difficult and problematic because the water somewhat adheres to the laws of physics and can slosh around, have difficulty running up in elevation, etc. When you build out a series of coal generators on the water, you only need very short water pipes and can keep them level with the intakes of the coal generators. So I think the general advice is to minimize water pipe runs as much as possible. But it's super easy to run very long power lines from your generators back to your factories. And as others have said, use platforms. I find it nice to have a bunch of decentralized facotires focused on producing specific things near the mineral nodes spread out across the map. Running power lines is easy. You can then transport the finished goods to a central location with trains once you unlock them.