Ideal Cheap Low-Watt Amp for Martin Logan Quest

You might consider Audiokinesis loudspeakers. They are wide bandwidth, revealing, easy to drive and reasonably priced!

WOW, I just had a revelation! Deep cell marine 12 volt battery, Class D car amp, solar can charge the battery during the day for many hours of use at night.
Better yet, get a 4 channel amp to biamp your speakers. Keep in mind that all class D amps do not sound the same. My Alpine in my car is much cleaner than the Precision Power that it replaced.
You can grab a used battery for $25-$50 bucks and pay about the same for the amp. This would keep it from depleting your home power and it will run that much cleaner. Keep in mind that most car amps are rated at 12 volts and 14.4 since a car alternator puts out higher voltage and produces more wattage.
I paid $50 for my Dayton amp used and it runs off 12 volts so that would work off it's own battery.

Yeah, we use a battery bank for nighttime use -- 6 volt golf cart batteries wired in series and parallel @24volt, then to a 4000w magnum inverter for 120/250v. We don't run anything at 24 volts because the inverter is pretty efficient and 24 volt requires thicker cable (higher amps for same watts @120v).
Having a separate battery for an amp would keep the amp from draining the main battery bank, and so the wear and tear would only be on a single battery. Though it would need to be charged separately and wired separately, which is a pain and an expense, somewhat. It's a cool idea, though my existing amp would drain a single battery in no time, and if I continued with that idea, I would have to have a big secondary battery setup for the amp, which for me would be silly.

For now I am thinking that a used Parasound zone v2 looks good-- nearly same price as dayton amp, which looked good except that it would be pushed to high distortion with electrostats.

Parasound Zone v2 is a linear amp, hopefully they continued tradition with bi-polar output devices not Mosfets.

This could work Stephenlloydwebber at the level you want, it would be nice to try before you buy.
As into your speakers it "may" not give enough current into the load of the bass/midbass, therefore it could sound a bit light/thin even at low volume. And keep it cool if possible!

I think the older Parasound HCA-800 MkII would be a better proposition though.

http://i42.servimg.com/u/f42/14/32/47/54/p1050216.jpg

Cheers George

If you forget and leave the amp on, you might want to think about the fact that a class D amp will not drain the batteries nearly as quickly!

Seriously, if I were you I would be looking at speakers that are easy to drive. When you make an amplifier work hard, not only will it have higher distortion but it will draw more power from the wall.

A more efficient speaker might mean that the amps only make 15 watts. That's low enough power that you could even use tubes! With a class D amp the power drain would be insubstantial.

A friend of mine lives off grid FWIW...