Energy management systems incorporating battery energy storage systems (BESSs) are an effective way to deal with peak power demand in power systems, contributing to sustainability and energy management. In these systems, BESS interface converters encounter many challenges, such as achieving high efficiency, reliability, and scalability. A partial power processing (PPP) converter is one of the promising methods for reducing system energy losses and increasing reliability, thereby optimizing energy conversion between the BESS and the dc bus. However, implementing PPP in a BESS requires a high input-to-output voltage ratio and bidirectional operation over the battery voltage variation, which increases the design complexity. This paper proposes a half-bridge push–pull converter and provides guidance on its design for that purpose. A design procedure considering system efficiency and operating principles is comprehensively investigated and is applied to a PPP converter operating with a 15 kW BESS. The simulation and experimental results show that the efficiency of the system reaches up to 99% with a converter efficiency of 88%, which shows that the proposed structure achieves bidirectional operation and high efficiency based on the partial power processing concept.