(Reuters) - More than 2.4 million homes and businesses were without power early on Thursday in Florida after being hit by Hurricane Ian, according to local power companies.

Some utilities have started to restore customers now that the storm has passed southern Florida even though the number of outages continues to increase as the storm chugs across Florida towards the Atlantic.

In its latest advisory the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Ian was causing flooding rains across central and northern Florida. The system was located about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south-southeast of Orlando, Florida, and was packing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (120 kmh) as of 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT).

The utility with the most outages so far was Florida Power & Light Co (FPL), a unit of Florida energy company NextEra Energy Inc (NYSE:NEE). FPL has activated its emergency response plan, which includes mobilizing more than 13,000 personnel to support power restoration efforts.

Major outages by utility:

Power Company State/Pro Out Now Customers Served

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NextEra - FPL FL 1,215,162 5,280,000

Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) - Florida FL 509,922 1,766,000

Emera - Tampa Electric FL 282,774 800,000

Lee County Electric Co-op FL 202,904 238,000

Lake Land Electric FL 62,103 142,841

Others FL ~120,858

Total Out ~2,393,723

Source: Company web sites, Poweroutage.us