The disassembly of microtubules can generate force and drive intracellular motility. During mitosis, for example, chromosomes remain persistently attached via kinetochores to the tips of disassembling microtubules, which pull the sister chromatids apart. According to the conformational wave hypothesis, such force generation requires that protofilaments curl outward from the disassembling tips to exert pulling force directly on kinetochores. Rigorously testing this idea will require modifying the mechanical and energetic properties of curling protofilaments, but no way to do so has yet been described. Here, by direct measurement of working strokes generated in vitro by curling protofilaments, we show that their mechanical energy output can be increased by adding magnesium, and that yeast microtubules generate larger and more energetic working strokes than bovine microtubules. Both the magnesium and species-dependent increases in work output can be explained by lengthening the protofilament curls, without any change in their bending stiffness or intrinsic curvature. These observations demonstrate how work output from curling protofilaments can be tuned and suggest evolutionary conservation of the amount of curvature strain energy stored in the microtubule lattice.