CWEA E/I Level 3 Practice Test 2026 – Comprehensive Exam Prep

The integral term accumulates past error to remove steady-state error, so increasing integral gain makes the controller respond more to accumulated error. While this can improve steady-state accuracy, pushing the integral gain too high makes the loop respond aggressively to small errors and to accumulated error, which can lead to overshoot and even sustained oscillations or instability. This tendency is amplified when the actuator saturates: the integral term keeps accumulating (wind-up) and, once the error becomes active again, delivers a large corrective action that causes large overshoot or oscillations. Anti-windup techniques are used to prevent this.

So the best description is that too much integral gain can cause overshoot and oscillations or instability due to integral wind-up. Increasing integral gain does not reduce overshoot; it often increases it. It also does affect stability, and it does not guarantee zero steady-state error in all situations.