I can't think of a reliable mitigation against "heads I win, tails you lose" such as seen in a privately owned rent-seeking utility, but clearly the existing system is going to fail more and more.
There are certainly valid criticisms of government operated public utilities, but in places I've lived under their umbrellas there weren't any life-threatening fiascos due to under-investment in expert-recommended tail risk mitigations. Maybe the operating cost of power / water was more than elsewhere, but I didn't notice (or have the ability to shop around).
A market approach may be to let utility customers buy service with a distribution of costs including claw-backs if there is a utility failure. Such a contract may incentivize utilities to install whole-house UPSs for customers who have a "$500 per hour of downtime" service contract. One can imagine the government mandating that in exchange for the last-mile monopoly and access to customers you must offer a full range of SLAs (ranging from a griddy-like "you pay for wholesale price + vig" to "you pay more but have a fixed cost but may have service interruptions" to "you pay substantially more but get clawbacks if the utility fails to meet delivery SLAs".
Likely over the next decade we'll see a continued 3rd worldization of more public goods such that those who are wealthy can just buy a powerwall and those who aren't will freeze / boil every 8-15 years.
A less markety approach is to operate the utilities as a quasi-government (IE not-profit seeking) organization with clear goals and governance; such things have worked in the past and also failed in the past and lots of fair-weather zealots will complain that it is government overreach.
There is every reason to predict that we will continue to send the cost of failure to the government/taxpayers and send profits (plus what should be normal infrastructure upkeep) of normal operation to whoever is well enough connected to operate the utility.