  Static Synchronous Compensators (STATCOMs) are being employed by Dominion
Energy to control voltage and enhance system stability. Due to the complexity
of the control systems, operational modes, and nonlinearities, it is essential
to evaluate STATCOMs' behavior to ensure their correct and proper response to
dynamic events such as line faults, generator trip, or load rejection
throughout the grid. This procedure brings benefit to device management by
identifying potential equipment problems and improve dynamic model for
simulation study. The proposed framework utilizes operation data collected in
Digital Fault Recorder (DFR) to evaluate STATCOM's response to dynamic system
events. One of the challenges on getting accurate model response comes from
STATCOMs with automatic gain adjustment feature. This feature actively measures
the external system's Thevanin impedance and accordingly changes the STATCOM
gain. Therefore, when trying to recreate the field measurements in the
simulation environment, it is necessary to match the short circuit level (SCL)
of the external system equivalent. This paper presents how these issues have
been solved in order to evaluate STATCOM's performance. Finally, the
effectiveness of proposed performance evaluation method is validated based on
two actual events caused by faults.
