This paper explores different strategies to set the reference current of a STATCOM under unbalanced grid voltage conditions and determines the maximum deliverable reactive power in each case to guarantee the injected current is permanently within the STATCOM secure operation limits. The paper presents a comprehensive derivation of the proposed STATCOMcontrol strategies to set the reactive current reference under unbalanced grid faults, together with an extensive evaluation using simulation and experimental results from a low-scale laboratory setup in order to verify and validate the dynamic performance achieved by the proposed reactive current limiting algorithms.