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Hurricane Irma has left more than three million businesses and homes without power
The storm has affected the biggest power company in Florida, Florida Power & Light’s (FPL).
FPL said more than 2.9million of its customers were without power by 7.40pm EDT (12.40pm BST), mostly in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
FPL spokesman Rob Gould said: “We are not subject to any special treatment from Hurricane Irma. We just experienced a power outage at our command centre. We do have backup generators.
“The restoration process will be measured in weeks, not days.”
This is similar to when Category 5 Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida in 1992.
More than 200,000 people had electricity restored, mostly by automated devices.
Gould said the restoration is no guarantee that electricity won’t go out again as high winds are expected to persist throughout the night.
The company’s system will need to be rebuilt, particularly in the western part of the state.
Other large utilities that serve other parts of the state saw their outage figures grow as the storm pushed north.
These include Duke Energy Corp, Southern Co and Emera Inc.
Duke had outages of about 60,000 customers by 6.15pm and 8pm EDT ( 11.15pm to 1am BST), and warned its 1.8million customers in northern and central Florida that outages could exceed 1million.
Emera’s Tampa Electric utility said the storm could affect up to 500,000 of the 730,000 homes.
The utilities have thousands of workers ready to help restore power once Irma passes – some as far away as California, Massachusetts, Texas, Colorado and Wisconsin.
About 17,000 are assisting FPL, nearly 8,000 at Duke and more than 1,300 at Emera.
However, Tampa Electric told customers on Sunday that response crews are halting work due to the high winds.
FPL said only one of the two reactors at its Turkey Point nuclear plant about 30 miles south of Miami on Saturday has been shut down because the storm shifted.
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Hurricane Irma has been downgraded to a Category 2 storm
It plans to leave both reactors in service at the St Lucie plant about 120 miles north of Miami because hurricane-force winds are no longer expected to hit the sites.
There is also spent nuclear fuel at Duke Energy Corp’s Crystal River plant, about 90 miles north of Tampa.
The plant, on Irma’s current forecast track, stopped operating in 2009 and was retired in 2013.
The worst-case scenario would see the spent fuel release radiation if exposed to the air, but a federal nuclear official said that was extremely unlikely.
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More than 200,000 people had electricity restored, mostly by automated devices
Scott Burnell of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said: “That fuel is so cold, relatively speaking, it would take weeks before there would be any concern.”
Hurricane Irma knocked out power in Florida as it hit the state as a Category 4 storm on Sunday morning, which is the second highest level on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
By the afternoon as it churned up the west coast, it weakened to a Category 2 with maximum sustained winds of 110 miles per hour (177 kph).