More than 2.4M in Florida still without power after Hurricane Milton

The number of customers in Florida without electricity in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton dropped to more than 2.4M on Friday morning, according PowerOutage.us, down from a high of more than 3.4M.

Duke Energy’s (NYSE:DUK) power outages total 886K out of 1.99M customers tracked, and NextEra Energy’s (NEE) Florida Power & Light’s outages total 669K out of 5.87M customers tracked.

UBS analysts said earlier this week that investors in those companies can have some confidence that prudently incurred storm costs will be recoverable, thanks to storm reserves they can draw from, with costs above that deferred until they can approve a rider to pay those costs and replenish the reserve.

The fifth-most-intense Atlantic hurricane on record, Milton could cost insurers $30B-$60B, Morningstar DBRS analyst Marcos Alvarez told Reuters on Friday, but that result would come in well below the $100B estimated by the firm earlier this week.

While Milton never generated the catastrophic surge of seawater that had been feared in Florida, energy providers warn the clean-up operation could take weeks or months to complete.