(Reuters) - More than 378,000 homes and businesses in the U.S. Southeast were without power on Friday as Hurricane Dorian skirted the Carolina coast, according to local electric companies.

Dorian, which smashed into the Bahamas earlier this week, was passing just east of Cape Lookout, North Carolina, at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT) on Friday, and was headed northeast at 14 miles per hour (22 kilometers per hour), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

It was packing maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, making it a Category 1 storm.

Duke Energy Corp, the hardest hit utility, projected earlier this week that Dorian could cause more than 700,000 outages - some possibly lasting several days - in eastern areas of North Carolina and South Carolina.

Duke said it had about 9,000 workers available to restore power after the storm, including 5,000 Duke line workers and tree personnel based in the Carolinas and 4,000 repair workers from 23 other U.S. states and Canada.